
Class. 
Book. 



GopyrightN 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSfL 



THE 



Lutheran Church in 
the Country 



A STUDY 

AN EXPLANATION 

AN ATTEMPTED SOLUTION 



G. H. GERBERDING, D.D., LL.D. 



AUTHOR OF 

New Testament Conversions, The Lutheran Pastor, The Lutheran 

Catechist, Problems and Possibilities, The Way of 

Salvation in the Lutheran Church, The 

Life and Letters of Passavant. 



PHILADELPHIA 

GENERAL COUNCIL PUBLICATION BOARD 

1916 






COPYKIGHT, I9l6. BY TBI 

Board of Publication of the General Council 

of the Evangelical Lutheran Church 

in North America 



All Sights Reserved 



/ 



AUG 30 1917 . 

©CI.A47 324 9 



/■ 



TO 

All Faithful Country Pastors 

Who Love the Country; 

Who Love Country People; 

Who Love the Country Church; 

Who Appreciate its Importance; 

Who Believe in its Possibilities; 

Who Believe that Lutheranism will Survive in the Country 

BECAUSE IT IS THE FITTEST; 

This Book is Affectionately 

DEDICATED 



PREFACE 

Some one has said; "If it were not for the 
stream of fresh, pure, uncontaminated blood 
flowing into them from the country the cities 
would rot in their own iniquity.' ' We are 
sorry to be compelled to believe that this is 
true. But the good, pure and purifying blood 
does not all come into the city from the country 
districts of our own land. Many of the much 
maligned ' i foreigners ' ' from the country dis- 
tricts of the old world are a saving salt of no 
small insignificance. 

This book wants to help the reader to under- 
stand country people and to appreciate the 
worth of country character. It desires to help 
the country pastor to remove what hinders 
and hurts country character. It would fain 
assist him to get a right understanding of his 
community and to use his church for its uplift. 
It hopes to contribute toward the saving and 
strengthening of the Lutheran Church in the 
country. 

The country problem is peculiar. Its solu- 
tion is difficult. The work is often depressing. 
The Lutheran pastor needs a better under- 
standing of the situation. 
v 



VI PREFACE 

Much has been written on the country church 
problem by men outside of our church. We 
can learn from these writers. We have used 
them in preparing this book. But there is much 
in them that we as Lutherans cannot use. After 
all, we are different. The Lutheran Church has 
principles, doctrines, conceptions, methods, and 
a spirit that are all her own. We need to look 
at the country church from our own viewpoint. 

The problem is not as acute among us as it 
is among others. But there are clouds and 
rumblings on our church sky also. In some 
spots the Lutheran Church is also declining in 
the country. If we do not study the situation 
and guard against the dangers then we also 
will have to suffer. Forewarned is forearmed. 

Our prayer is that this book may assist and 
encourage our country pastors. Their work 
is important. Their opportunities are great. 
Their sky is big with promise. God bless them. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



CHAPTEB 

Chapteb 



PART I. 

IMPORTANCE OF THE COUNTRY 

PAGE 
I. — Man's Relation to the Soil as God 

Made It 11 

II.— Man's Relation to the Soil as Sin 

Made It 15 



PART II. 
CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 

Chapteb III. — Economic Conditions in the Country. . 23 
Chapteb IV. — Psychological Conditions in the Coun- 
try 31 

Chapteb V.— Social Conditions in the Country 40 

Chapteb VI. — Educational Conditions in the Coun- 
try 48 

Chapteb VII. — Religious Conditions in the Country . . 5S 

PART III. 

CAUSES OF COUNTRY CONDITIONS 

Chapteb VIII.-— Causes of Church Decline 71 

Chapteb IX. — Causes of Church Decline (Con't'd) . . 79 
vii 



Till CONTENTS 

PART IV. 

THE LUTHERAN SITUATION IN THE COUNTEY 

PAGE 

l iiapteb X. — Lutherans and Land 91 

Chapter XI. — The Lutheran Situation Today — A 

Bundle of Letters 98 

Chapter XII.— The Situation and Letters (Con't'd) . .106 
Chapter XIII.— The Situation and Letters (Con't'd) . .115 
Chapter XIV. — Summarizing the Situation 126 

PART V. 

COUNSELS FOR COUNTRY PASTORS 

Chapter XV.— Right and Wrong Remedies 137 

Chapter XVI— Right and Wrong Remedies (Con't'd). 143 
Chapter XVII.— Remedies (Continued) 149 

PART VI. 

EXHORTATION AND EXAMPLE 

Chapter XVIII.— Right Remedies 159 

Chapter XIX.— Right Remedies ( Continued ) 165 

PART VII. 

INSPIRING EXAMPLES 
Chapter XX. — A Lutheran Pastor's Wonderful Work..l77 
Chapter XXI. — Oberlin's Industrial and Social Leader- 
ship 186 

Chapter XXII. — Other Inspiring Examples 194 



Part (§nt 

INTRODUCTORY 

8tt|* Smporf attr* of % (ttmmtnj 



And God said, Let the earth bring forth 
grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree 
yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in 
itself, upon the earth : and it was so. 

And the earth brought forth grass, and herb 
yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yield- 
ing fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his 
kind: and God saw that it was good. . . . 

And the Lord God formed man of the dust 
of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils 
the breath of life: and man became a living 
soul. — Moses. 



CHAPTER ONE. 

MAN 's RELATION TO THE SOIL AS GOD MADE IT. 

The soil was made by God. As it came from 
the creative hand it was free from hurtful seed 
or growth. It did not exhale poisonous vapors 
or gases. It was good. It was clean. It was 
fruitful. It was made to be the happy abode 
of happy mankind. For this God had fitted and 
suited the soil. 

After God had prepared the earth for man 
God formed man out of the soil. The soil is the 
material out of which God made man's body. 
The soil is the source from which man's body 
came. 

This old truth of God's own creation story 
has been corroborated by one of the youngest 
of the physical sciences. Chemistry has de- 
monstrated that every substance that is found 
in the human body is found also in the soil. 

On his physical side man is related to the 
earth on which he walks and lives. He is of 
the earth, earthy. The earth is his mother. 
Brutus was not so far wrong when, told to kiss 
his mother, he prostrated himself and kissed the 
earth. In a real sense it is "Mother Earth." 

The earth is a good mother to man's physical 
frame. She supplies, directly or indirectly, all 
11 



12 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

his wants. Is he hungry? Her grains, her 
fruits, her earth-nourished animals furnish him 
his meat in his season. The good mother has 
enough for all if her children will only take 
the necessary trouble to get it from her. Is 
he thirsty? The waters that bubble up from 
her springs, that are drawn from her wells, 
that ripple down from her mountains, burst 
forth from her rocks, flow out in her streams, 
or lie ready in her seas, quench his thirst. The 
juices, distillations and concoctions from her 
fruits, flowers and grains yield the more taste- 
ful and delicious drinks. Is he cold? Would he 
protect himself against frost and icy wind? 
Would he cover his nakedness or adorn his body 
and make it a thing of beauty in his own eyes 
and in the eyes of his fellows? The flax and 
the cotton and other products of nature are at 
his service. Or, if he prefer, the wool and hide 
and hair and feathers of earth-fed animals are 
at his disposal. 

Does he want further shelter where he may 
retire and rest and feel secure against the un- 
friendly elements and other forces or dangers? 
Mother earth has material out of which and 
with which he may frame for himself a shelter, 
a dwelling, a home. Does he need heat for 
more comfort or for making his foods more 
palatable and healthful, or light that he may 
see after the darkness falls? Mother earth 



MAN ? S RELATION TO THE SOIL AS GOD MADE IT 13 

again is ready to provide for these wants also. 

Does he realize that it is not good for him 
to be alone, does he have desire for sex, for 
mating, for a companion in his home? Even 
here, living, earthy bodies are ready for him. 

And when at last this poor, earthy body must 
weaken and die, the good mother opens her 
bosom, takes in her child, wraps him around 
with herself and so gives him his last cool, 
quiet bed. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust 
to dust. 

Is it any wonder that man loves the soil, the 
source from which he comes? No, it is no 
wonder. It is but natural. There is a mystic 
tie between man and material nature. And 
doubtless this explains why we all desire a 
piece of ground that we can call our own. For 
this reason we feel more important, we get a 
greater self-respect, we have a new and more 
comfortable feeling when we are owners of 
something that is real — real — estate. 

This also may explain the danger of this 
otherwise laudable desire of becoming a real 
owner of realty. The danger lies in the fact 
that this desire so easily and so often becomes 
insatiable. So often the owner of land becomes 
more and more greedy and grasping for more 
and ever more land. The more he has the more 
he wants. It is the yielding to this desire, the 
gratifying of this powerful passion that has 



14 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

brought untold misery, sorrow and suffering 
into the world. 

King Ahab was a rich man. He had a big 
farm, a royal estate, but he and his wife coveted 
his neighbor's vineyard. The desire grew into 
a passion, and the king and queen became mur- 
derers to get that vineyard. There have been 
many like them. This inordinate and sinful 
desire for more land has brought about one of 
the serious problems of the country church, as 
we shall see. 

Man's love of land and of what comes from 
or out of it may also explain his deep desire 
for the precious metals and minerals that are 
hid in the bowels of the earth. The silver, the 
gold, and the precious stones; the money and 
the jewels made out of them : oh how they are 
loved ! And how the love grows into a power- 
ful, an overpowering passion that robs man of 
all that is kind and good, hardens and turns 
him into a veritable fiend. 

Truly here is a philosophy. It is the philoso- 
phy of the old Book. It is a philosophy that 
explains much. Man, on his physical side, is 
related to the earth. He loves the earth. This 
love may become a snare that will entangle and 
enmesh him in temporal and eternal ruin. 
1 ' Neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor 's house, 
nor his field.' ' "They covet fields and take 
them by violence. ,, "The love of money is a 
root of all evil. ' ' 



CHAPTER TWO. 

MAN 's RELATION TO THE SOIL AS SIN MADE IT. 

Man's body is not all of him. He is more 
than body. God's work was not finished when 
He had made Adam's body out of the dust of 
the ground. God breathed into his nostrils. 
God — breathed! God breathed the breath of 
life into man. 

Here, then, is another element put into man. 
This new element is not of the earth earthy. 
Here is a part of man that is from heaven. It 
is from God. It came out of God into man. 
What a thought! If on the one side of my 
nature I am related to the ground, on the other 
side I am related to Heaven. I came forth from 
God. If one side of me is earthy, another side 
of me is heavenly. And man became a living 
soul. And so God created man in His own 
image: in the image of God created He him. 

But this man, dichotomous, that is, made of 
two parts, fell into sin, lost his first estate and 
became a sinful being. As the race was in 
Adam, the race fell in him. 

In Adam's fall 
We sinned all. 

And when the crown of creation fell, crea- 
15 



16 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

tion itself was affected. Man's relation to crea- 
tion was changed. God decreed " cursed is the 
ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat 
of it all the days of thy life. Thorns and 
thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou 
shalt eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of 
thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return 
unto the ground. For dust thou art and unto 
dust thou shalt return.' ' 

And so Mother Earth became hardened 
against her offspring. Instead of bringing 
forth freely only that which was agreeable and 
good for man, she began to produce her ever 
recurring crop of thorns and thistles, her 
noxious and poisonous weeds, her exhalations 
of fever, her microbes of death. 

Poor man ! If the Eden that he lost was like 
the Eden that through the Second Adam can be 
regained, then there was "nothing to hurt in 
all God's holy mountain." But now the forces 
of nature had become hostile. Now he must 
toil and sweat to wring a scanty sustenance 
from an unwilling soil. Now in addition to his 
vegetable foes and earth's ofttime hurtful 
breath, there are a thousand insect pests, there 
are tempests and droughts, there are floods 
and fires, with famine and pestilence in their 
wake. All because of sin. 

But fallen man still clings to fallen earth. 
He must. He cannot subsist without it. He 



MAN 'S RELATION TO THE SOIL AS SIN MADE IT 17 

still loves land and what he can get from its 
surface or dig out of its mines. Too often 
land-love and gold-love are his ruin for both 
worlds. 

For too many, on the other hand, the priva- 
tion and the toil of the country are too much. 
They want an easier life. They would fain 
find a living with less of sweat of face or of 
brain. They would run away from the curse 
of sin. 

For this they forsake the land. The elders 
sell or rent the farm and retire to the town or 
the city. The young tire of the exactions of 
Mother Earth and go where they hope to make a 
more comfortable living with less hardship and 
more pay. So they flee the farm and flock to 
the city. They imagine that the city will be a 
more kindly master. They ignore the hard fact 
that tens of thousands who had bread enough 
and to spare in the country home perish with 
hunger and go down to ruin in the great city. 

So farms are deserted or rented, country dis- 
tricts degenerate and counties and states lose in 
population. The country church suffers because 
there are not so many people to go as in former 
years. Among those that are left life is harder, 
the spirit is more bitter. Eebellion against 
Providence and alienation from the church 
abound. And so the country church suffers more 
than ever. Of all this, more is told further on. 

But the country is still the foundation of 



18 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

national and social well-being. The city is de- 
pendent on the country. Those who forsake 
the soil cannot live without it. Should the 
country fail to produce whence would the 
dwellers of the city get to consume? The 
cities of India and China are decimated from 
time to time with the untold horrors of famine 
because the rural regions fail to produce the 
needed crops. The dwellers in the city need 
to appreciate more highly the toilers in the 
country. Our government cannot do too much 
for the farmer. The farmer needs all the help 
he can get to encourage him to do better work 
and to get better returns. The state dare never 
say of the farmer, I have no need of thee. It 
will be a sad day for the people of the city and 
of the state when the country and its agriculture 
deteriorate. If the city is built up at the ex- 
pense of the country, if the country is drained 
of its best blood to make the city strong, then 
the woes must fall. 

And if the country church must weaken, if 
its blessed influence must withdraw from the 
hearts and homes and lives of those who dwell 
around her temples, the ruin of the rural re- 
gions must come on apace. If the country 
church must die, if its communities must hea- 
thenize, then will the desert return, barrenness, 
waste, and desolation will replace the erstwhile 
happy land and happy homes. And what then 
of the common weal of the city and of the state 2 



MAN *S RELATION TO THE SOIL AS SIN MADE IT 19 

The country is important. It needs to be 
made more and more prosperous. Every citi- 
zen of our great nation is dependent on its wel- 
fare. All have a deep interest in its prosperity. 

In the best sense of the word the country 
cannot prosper without the church. The church 
cannot fulfill its mission in saving the nation 
without saving the people of the country. She 
needs to save them in the broadest sense of the 
word. She needs to save them from sin and all 
its baleful consequences in this life. She needs 
to save them for righteousness and true holi- 
ness here. She needs to show the truth, the 
realness, the pragmatic value of the promise 
of the life that now is. She needs to make 
men, women and children holier and happier in 
their everyday life. She needs to enrich the 
heart life, the home life, the community life. 
She needs to make the life in the country and 
in the country town more worth living. 

And all this without forgetting for a mo- 
ment, the promise of the life that is to come. 
Her children are never to forget, must ever 
keep in mind that the very best that even a 
child of God can have in this world is not to 
be compared with the things that God has in 
future store for his children. The richest and 
happiest life in this world is but a feeble fore- 
taste of the world to come whereof we speak. 

"We need to understand the church in the 
country, her mission and her possibilities. 



Part Slum 

(flrniimuma in ti?F (Cnnntrg 



"This is the place, stand still my steed, 

Let me review the scene 
And summon from the shadowy path 
The forms that once have been." 

— Longfellow. 

"Go to thy birthplace and if faith was there 
Repeat thy father's creed, thy mother's 
prayer. ' ' — Holmes. 

"Down in the human heart, crushed by the 
tempter 
Feelings lie buried that Grace can restore; 
Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kind- 
ness, 
Cords that were broken will vibrate once 
more." — Bishop Doane. 

"King out the care, the want, the sin, 
The faithless coldness of the times, 
Eing out, ring out my mournful rimes 
But ring the fuller minstrel in." 

— Tennyson. 

"Give me neither poverty nor riches 

Lest I be full and deny Thee and say, Who is 
the Lord? Or lest I be poor and steal and take 
the name of my God in vain." — Agur. 

"0 ye hypocrites, can ye discern the face of 
the sky, but can ye not discern the signs of 
the times?" —Christ. 



CHAPTER THREE. 

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY. 

We cannot understand the country church 
without understanding country conditions. 
The psychological, the social and the spiritual 
conditions all are more or less dependent on 
the economic condition. This is a truth too 
often forgotten and ignored by studious and 
scholarly theorizers. After all the speculations 
and discussions of centuries conditions far 
more than theories make up the content of life. 
Lutheran scholars and theologians rightly love 
the sound scriptural, satisfying and saving 
doctrines of their church. The writer of this 
yields to no one in his ever-increasing appre- 
ciation, admiration and love of the Lutheran 
theology. But he is also impressed more and 
more with the stubborn fact that the every day 
conditions under which people live their every 
day life have much to do with the reception 
and practice of what the church teaches. The 
seed may be perfect, but if the soil is a solid 
foot-path or wagon road, if the soil is a shallow 
layer over a substratum of rock, if the soil is 
filled full of the seeds and roots of noxious 

23 



24 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

thorns and thistles there will be no crop from 
the best of seed. The soil needs to be studied, 
treated, and made fit for the good seed. 

What then are some of the general economic 
conditions of the dwellers on the land around 
the country church? The United States census 
of 1910 informs us that at the time of its tak- 
ing four out of every ten farmers of our nation 
were renters. What seems at first sight as a 
strange fact is that the proportion of renters 
is smallest where the soil is poorest and is 
largest where the soil is richest. But on second 
thought this is but natural. In proportion as 
the soil is productive does the owner make and 
save money. And so with good management 
he becomes independent, rents out his farm 
and moves to the town or city as a retired 
farmer. In proportion as his soil is unpro- 
ductive is he retarded from reaching this 
coveted goal, but must continue to dig a bare 
living from his stingy acres. In the wealthiest 
farming states of the middle West fully fifty 
per cent, of the farmers are renters, and the 
counties in these states that have the richest 
soil have the largest proportion of renters. 

These renters are not rooted in the soil. 
They have no interest in the farm except to 
exploit it for the money they can get out of it. 
The buildings may run down more and more. 
The soil may become more and more impover- 



ECONOMIC CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 25 

ished. The appearance of the home and farm 
may become more and more dilapidated and 
forlorn. The tenant as a rule is not worried 
with these things. It is not his own home. All 
he wants is immediate returns in money. He 
is constantly on the lookout for a farm on 
which he may do better for himself. He is 
ready to move at any time. Sitting thus loosely 
and uncertainly in his residence he has no 
neighborhood interest. Economic and social 
development of the community have no interest 
for him. Why should he contribute time, effort 
or money for public roads, public schools or 
churches? He may not be here next year. He 
is of little economic value to the community. 
And if the community is largely made up of 
this sort of dwellers it certainly is a dreary 
place to live in. Even from an economic view- 
point its situation is deplorable. It cannot be 
progressive. It is barren of promise as long 
as conditions remain as they are. 

Professor Thomas Nixon Carver, an expert 
authority on country conditions, has this to 
say on the rural renter problem: 

"Next to war, pestilence and famine, the 
worst thing that can happen to a rural com- 
munity is absentee landlordism. In the first 
place, the rents are collected and sent out of 
the neighborhood to be spent somewhere else: 
but this is the least of the evils. In the second 



26 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

place there is no one in the neighborhood who 
has any permanent interest in it except as a 
source of income. The tenants do not feel like 
spending any money or time in beautifying or 
in improving the moral or social surroundings. . 
Their one interest is to get as large an income 
from the land as they can in the immediate 
present. Because they do not live there, the 
landlords care nothing for the community ex- 
cept as a source of rent and they will not spend 
anything in local improvements unless they see 
that it will increase rent. Therefore such a 
community looks bad and possesses the legal 
minimum in the way of schools, churches and 
other agencies for social improvement. 

14 In the third place, and worst of all, the land- 
lords and tenants live so far apart and see one 
another so infrequently as to furnish very little 
opportunity for mutual acquaintance and un- 
derstanding. Therefore class antagonism 
arises and bitterness of feeling shows itself in 
a variety of ways. Where the whole neighbor- 
hood is made up of a tenant class which feels 
hostile toward the landlord class evasions of 
all kinds are resorted to in order to beat the 
hated landlords. On the other hand the land- 
lords are goaded to retaliation and the rack- 
rent system prevails. Sometimes the com- 
munity feeling among tenants becomes so 
strong as to develop a kind of artificial * tenant 



ECONOMIC CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 27 

right ' which is in opposition to the laws of the 
land, and the laws of the land are then made 
more severe to control the ' tenant right.' " 

Such a tenant population, without lands or 
homes of their own, becomes migrative, shift- 
less and poor. Life is robbed of all charm. 
The things that should lighten the labors of 
the home are absent. The things that should 
brighten the life are not found. The clothing is 
cheap and shabby. The house is bare and un- 
attractive. Flowers do not grace the outside 
and what should be a lawn is a wilderness of 
weeds. The man on the outside must toil with 
primitive, defective and dull tools. His labor 
is tenfold more laborious and tenfold less pro- 
ductive than it would be with the latest im- 
proved tools and machinery. In many places 
he does not even own the tools and animals on 
the place. In these cases his interest in them 
is still less. 

On the inside the wife must drudge through 
her daily round without the modern labor- 
saving and comfort-bringing furnishings. As 
best she can she must go through her dreary 
tasks with no outlook of hope or betterment. 
The things that should lighten, brighten, beau- 
tify, develop and enrich every woman 's life are 
not for her. And so all noble ambition in father 
and mother either dies out or they arrange to 
leave the country and try the town or city. 



28 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

They reason that life cannot be much worse, 
and should it be even harder there will be com- 
pensations in being able to break up the deadly 
monotony, to find some diversion or excitement, 
or at worst, to have fellowship in life's sor- 
rows. 

And what of the young people that grow up 
in such country hardship and poverty? Is it 
not the most natural thing in the world that 
they should make up their minds quite early 
that they and their future families are not go- 
ing to live like poor father and mother live! 
They too plan for the promising life in city or 
town. 

And so the depletion of the country goes on 
apace. Not in all places alike. The above dark 
picture does not describe all rural communities. 
We are glad to know that there are many bright 
exceptions. Of these we shall sptak in other 
chapters. But that the sad conditions set 
forth above prevail all too widely, and often 
in our best and richest regions, is demonstrated 
by the following facts : 

Over twenty years ago Dr. Josiah Strong, 
who always knows whereof he speaks, affirmed 
that nine hundred and thirty townships in 
New England were losing in population. Six 
hundred and forty townships in New York, nine 
hundred and nineteen in Pennsylvania, and 
seven hundred and seventy five in Ohio were 



ECONOMIC CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 29 

likewise losing. On these facts of his own 
gathering he commented thus: "If this mi- 
gration continues, and no new preventing 
measures are devised, I see no reason why isola- 
tion, irreligion, irgnorance, vice and degrada- 
tion should not increase in the country until we 
have a rural American peasantry, illiterate and 
immoral, possessing the rights of citizenship 
but utterly incapable of performing or compre- 
hending its duties. " 

In the decade preceding 1910 the rural town- 
ships of Illinois lost eleven hundred and thir- 
teen in population. During the same time 
seventy per cent, of the rural townships of 
New York registered a loss. Worse losses are 
reported from rural New England. While 
DesMoines, Iowa, during that decade gained 
over twenty-four thousand and every city of 
over eight thousand in that state grew, that rich 
state as a whole lost seven thousand! Eural 
Indiana lost over eighty-three thousand ; rural 
Missouri over sixty-eight thousand.* 

Here, then, are some big problems for the 
church in the country. The church cannot live 
and prosper in a community whose inhabitants 
are deteriorating financially and morally. The 
church is ever dependent on the home. Where 

* For the facts and figures here stated we are indebted 
to G. Walter Fiske's illuminating and comprehensive book, 
"The Challenge of the Country." 



30 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

the home demoralizes the church life must 
suffer. The church cannot grow where the 
population is diminishing. The church must 
look these problems in the face. 



CHAPTER FOUR. 

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY. 

The Rural Mind. 

We are studying conditions in the country. 
We have looked at the economic situation. 
That situation has its influence on the people 
who dwell where it obtains. The old saying 
that human nature is always and everywhere 
the same is true. Fundamental human nature 
does not change. Its manifestations, its habits, 
its activities, however, do vary and change. 
Humanity is influenced by environment. People 
are modified by their surroundings. Environ- 
ment does make great and lasting changes in 
the life, habits and character of people. These 
changes are not sudden. They often come 
slowly. Those who are affected are often un- 
conscious of it. Evil communications corrupt 
good manners. Companionship is a mighty 
moulder of men. When cultured and refined 
people through misfortune or bad habits drift 
into the slums and live there for years, almost 
inevitably they and their families are changed. 
They naturally absorb the social mind of the 
31 



32 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

slum in which they live. Long term prisoners 
come out with minds and characters different 
from those that they took into confinement. 

We would not be understood, however, as 
believing or teaching that every one is fated to 
be fashioned by his surrounding. Man has a 
will. He can change his environment, rise 
above it or get away from it. Above all must 
we bear in mind that the grace of God can 
enable one to remain bright among the dull, to 
remain clean among the unclean, to be and 
remain morally strong in the midst of moral 
degenerates. We do not subscribe to the deter- 
ministic or fatalistic philosophy that makes of 
man a helpless slave to either his heredity or 
his environment. We believe in a psychologi- 
cally free will and in a theological freedom, 
conditioned by the acceptance of the means of 
grace. But with all this we acknowledge the 
powerful influence of environment. 

Country life has an environment that is all 
its own. It is totally different from the en- 
vironment of life in the city. It molds and 
makes habit and character. It produces a rural 
type, a rural mind. 

Those who have been reared in or lived long 
in the country are apt to acquire the habits and 
manners of their neighbors. These habits of 
mind and spirit become more and more fixed. 
While they vary more or less with locality, the 



PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 33 

underlying traits are much the same the land 
over. It is of vital importance that we under- 
stand the rural mind and character. 

The dweller on the land lives in close contact 
with nature. As he is dependent on nature he 
needs to understand her. To understand he 
must needs observe and study her. He is per- 
force a thinker. He notes the processes of nature. 
He observes that her operations are slow. He 
cannot force her to abandon her course. Her 
times and seasons are relentless. Her weather 
is inexorable. Her moods are merciless. She 
pays no heed to his needs, his comforts or his 
greatest desires. There is a majesty of calm- 
ness in her light heed of human weal or woe. 
The farmer must realize his dependence, his 
helplessness, his insignificance over against that 
nature in which he lives and labors and on 
which he depends. Her smiles and her tears, 
her songs and her sighs, her sun and her storm 
are all independent of him. 

If he is an earnest thinker he must see that 
there is a disturbing element in nature. Her 
killing cold, her burning heat, her destructive 
storms, her perennial pests all show that there 
is something wrong. In his daily struggles 
against all these foes he must ask, Why is it 
thus? If he reads and ponders the old story 
of the fall, of sin, of its effects on the whole 
material creation, if he hears these things 



34 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

rightly explained in his church, he has the only 
explanation that really explains. It gives him 
food for his quiet meditations. It rests and 
satisfies his inquiring mind. The unbelieving 
farmer has no such explanation, no such un- 
derstanding, no such satisfaction. 

Meantime his quiet meditative life, his dis- 
cipline in watching and waiting, his need of 
conquering hindrances, of beginning over and 
over again, of hoping where he sees no hope, 
of trusting in Him who is above nature and 
rules over her, all this is calculated to make 
him patient, quiet, calm, believing that all is 
well or will be well. 

Life in the country tends to make man con- 
servative. The farm-dweller likes the old. He 
is inclined to be suspicious of the new. He is 
a traditionalist. The old ways of thinking, the 
old ways of doing, the old traditions, the old 
beliefs, these appeal to him. What was good 
enough for his forefathers is good enough 
for him. New fangled fashions and ways and 
notions are fraught with mischief if not with 
sin. It is hard to convince him that the world 
moves, that times change, and that, in a good 
sense, w r e ought to change with the times. 

The countryman is hard to change. His un- 
reasoning conservatism is often an injury to 
himself. If he is bad he seems to want to 
remain^ bad. His wrong notions do a grievous 



PSYCHOLOGICAL. CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 35 

wrong to his wife and children. Many a poor 
woman in the farm-house is a prisoner, a 
drudge, a slave, because her husband is stingy, 
does not believe in beauty, in even harmless 
recreation, in the dress that a good woman 
craves, in improved and labor-saving house 
equipment. She is a martyr to his senseless 
conservatism. No wonder that the children run 
away from such a father as soon as they can. 
But the hopeless wife must stay. Should we not 
run away also? 

If, however, our farmer is a good man, if he 
is properly instructed and enlightened, then his 
conservatism is a valuable virtue. Lack of con- 
servatism, lack of balance, impulsiveness and 
flightiness are weaknesses of our age. We 
sorely need well-balanced, right-motived, and 
wise conservatism. To throw away all that is 
old for no other reason than that it is old is as 
foolish as to love and to hold on to the old for 
the same reason. The wise and judicious con- 
servation loves the old only when it is good, 
and as long as he finds nothing better. If the 
country man is possessed of such wise and good 
conservatism he is a valuable citizen, and ought 
to be a good churchman. Such men can be re- 
lied upon. They can be tied to. The church 
needs them. The true pastor uses them. They 
make good Lutherans. The Lutheran Church, 



^b LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

in proportion as they understand her, appeals 
to them. She satisfies them. 

The dweller on the land, living apart from 
the multitude, spending most of his waking 
hours with no companion but himself and 
nature is apt to become a pronounced individ- 
ualist. The individualist easily becomes selfish. 
The selfish man may become a danger to his 
family, his neighborhood and his church — if he 
has a church. The selfish man is a bad man. 
His selfishness opens the door to various vices. 
As selfishness is the most pronounced mani- 
festation of sin, all men have more or less of it. 
The selfish man knows how to appeal to the 
sub-conscious selfishness in others. As he is 
himself a surly, an unhappy man, and as misery 
loves company, he wants others to be like him. 
He is in danger of becoming a leader, a "sir 
oracle" at the country store, at the town, school 
or church meeting. He is a heart-sore to many 
a country parson. 

As the dweller in the country, unless he be 
a hired man, is his own boss, there is often a 
temptation and a tendency to laziness. Where 
this is yielded to we find the slip-shod, happy- 
go-lucky unsuccessful farmer. His shiftless- 
ness, and thriftlessness make and keep him 
poor. Unless he inherits it, or marries it, he 
does not become a land-owner but is a renter. 
He blames his poverty on the soil, the climate, 



PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 6( 

the weather or the government. He also is 
often a loafer, a talker who loves to air his 
grievances in public places. He is a poor hus- 
band, an unfortunate father, a profitless citi- 
zen, an unworthy churchman, a detriment to 
the community. At heart he also is selfish. He 
also is an individualist. His philosophy of life 
is too often listened to in the country. He is a 
poisoner of the minds of youth. He is often 
found in the open country. More often in the 
country town. 

Because the farmer is prone to be an individ- 
ualist he is often stubborn and impatient of 
advice. He prides himself in his own opinions, 
and refuses to be enlightened. His opinionated 
narrow stubbornness is a barrier to mental 
development. He is joined to his idols. Only 
the grace of God can renew and change him. 

Because of individualism we find such bitter 
feuds in country communities. We find the 
hard, relentless and unforgiving spirit. We 
find husbands and wives, parents and children, 
neighbors and church-members who do not 
speak to each other for weeks, months and even 
for years. We find feuds and factions among 
relations and in the country churches. Many a 
country church has been wrecked and ruined 
by such unrelenting, unforgiving, bitter, venge- 
ful feuds and factions. 

Surely the country is a good place to study 



38 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

human nature. Here we find it in its native 
crudeness. Here it is unconcealed by the arts 
of insincere etiquette. Here the so-called white 
lies of polite society have not yet done their de- 
ceiving and destructive work. Here men have 
not yet learned or adopted Tallyrand's pernic- 
ious principle that human speech is given that 
man may use it to deceive his fellow man. Here 
is naked, native human nature. 

But for this very reason, that there is less 
concealment of the true self, less artificiality, 
less hiding of motive and intent, because all is 
more open and above-board, because the heart, 
the spirit, the life can be known, the country 
presents a more hopeful field for Christian en- 
deavor. 

With all their individualism, with all their 
peculiarities and eccentricities, country people 
present a most inviting field for the church. 
The farmer loves to meet and get acquainted 
with a manly man. He has neither time nor 
use for an upstart, for a sham, for a conceited 
pretender. He is open to manly approach. His 
confidence needs to be won first. When once 
his confidence is won he is eager and ready to 
learn. He wants something to think about, to 
talk about, to take pride in, to be satisfied with. 

On account of his meditative tendency he is 
open to the deeper truths of revelation. When 
once he comprehends, apprehends and experi- 



PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 39 

ences the great vital doctrines of sin and grace 
they are to him the pearl of great price. He is 
a most promising subject for the Lutheran 
Church. Her teaching and her appeal appeal 
to him. 



CHAPTER FIVE. 

SOCIAL. CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY. 

In the country the homes are more or less 
isolated. Miles of distance often separate the 
families. The roads and gates between the 
homes make access and intercourse more or 
less difficult. Man cannot talk over the news 
and topics of the day with neighbors in the 
same block, across the street or on the same 
front porch. Women cannot run in for a chat 
next door or gossip over the back fence. Chil- 
dren cannot play with others on the front street. 
The sounds of their laughter or shouting do not 
come into the open window. The neighbor's 
song or phonograph or piano is not heard. 
With the exception of nature's sounds all, out- 
side of the family voices and sounds, is stillness. 
Outside of the family many days and weeks 
may be spent without seeing another face or 
hearing another human voice. The frequency 
or infrequency of this depends on the social or 
unsocial spirit of the family. Some families 
get all the sociability that is good for them. 
Others are veritable hermitages. A stern, 
40 



SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 41 

surly, selfish, unsocial head of a house may 
practically isolate or imprison his family. 

At best the isolation of a farm home is a 
characteristic of life in the country that needs 
to be studied. 

The farm family should have a well developed 
social life within itself. This is all too fre- 
quently made impossible by greed and over- 
work. Where every member of the household 
day after day works to the limit of physical 
exhaustion sociability dies out. In such homes 
people have neither time nor inclination to be 
civil. They are too tired to talk. Words be- 
come few and hard. Sympathy, affection and 
kindliness cannot thrive in such an atmosphere. 
Such overwork is a serious sin. It flourishes in 
farm homes. 

The most grievous sin is against the wife and 
the growing children. To the sin against the 
wife we have referred before. Many farm- 
wives die or go insane from tread-mill toil and 
loneliness. Their unsympathetic, greedy and 
hard-hearted husbands make martyrs of them. 

The children are overworked. Much is writ- 
ten and said against child labor in mill and 
mine and factory. The protest against such in- 
human cruelty cannot be too loud. The guilty 
employers cannot be pilloried, censured and 
execrated too severely. But what of over- 
worked children on the farm? The long hours in 



42 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

field and garden and barn, the everlasting 
chores after the long day's work ought to be 
done, the exposure to wet and cold and heat, 
the scant home comforts, the absence of time 
and opportunity for play — oh the unspeakable 
.sadness of a joyless childhood! The crime of 
robbing children of what God wants them to 
have ! It is a sin that abounds among farmers. 
No legacy left behind for such children can 
ever atone for the robbing of childhood joys. 
Among the very best legacies that parents can 
bequeath is the memory of a happy childhood. 

The home life on the farm could and should be 
the happiest of all. It holds a high place in the 
literature of all lands. Art has given it a 
unique charm. The pictures, the stories, the 
songs of the country home have been the delight 
of all ages. We all linger over and love them 
today. 

In the right kind of a country home the hus- 
band and wife are loving partners. Both work 
but neither overworks. Their interests and 
their joys are shared with each other. They 
miss each other when separated. They love 
each other's society. There are no secrets be- 
tween them. In their social hours with each 
other they talk over their separate and their 
common interests. Each is a helper to the 
other. Each consults the needs and desires of 
the other. Each tries to make the life of the 



SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 43 

other richer and happier. Each rejoices in the 
other's joy. Their social life with each other 
is a happy life. 

Such parents are also companions to their 
children. The mothers and daughters are in- 
separable. The father is the best chum for 
the boys. All love each other's society. The 
parents provide games, plays and all sorts of 
amusements for the little ones and often play 
with them. There are clean, wholesome and 
interesting books and papers for the older ones. 
These are read by parents and children and 
are talked over with each other. There is 
music in the home. Girls and boys are given 
lessons. Art is encouraged where there are 
talent and taste for it. The girls are instructed 
and get practice in the domestic arts as well 
as in fancy work. The boys have rooms and 
places for useful and interesting pastimes. 
Tools, printing presses, electrical appliances 
are furnished and their use encouraged. And 
so the home is a happy society. It has a rich 
soul-life of its own. 

In such a home there is an absence of that 
rather low and common conversation that 
characterizes so many country families and 
neighborhoods. In the model home all the in- 
mates can and do discuss great thoughts and 
great interests. In too many places the talk is 
about the neighbors' faults, misfortunes and 



44 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

peculiarities. The family group and other 
groups seem to gloat over accidents, sufferings, 
calamities, and gruesome things of all kinds. 
Sickness, suffering, death of man or of beast 
are rehashed and rehearsed with every dire de- 
tail. Other people's mistakes, weaknesses, 
faults, falls and sins are exposed and gloated 
over. The mind is kept full of sad and often 
repulsive pictures. The soul is dwarfed and 
degraded. Life is narrowed and impoverished. 
What a sad and sinful social life to live. 

But even where the highest and best social 
life obtains in the family there is need of a 
neighborhood life. A model family may be- 
come too much self-centered. This would breed 
egotism, pride and narrowness. As no individ- 
ual, so no family ought to live to itself. Each 
family and each member of every family has 
a social obligation to his community. In this 
respect also there are frequent failures. There 
are communities in which little if any neigh- 
borhood spirit exists. The neighbors seldom 
meet. Some of them never, unless a funeral 
should bring them together. 

In the more olden time neighbors could not 
do without each other. There were frequent 
occasions that brought them together. Barn 
or house-raisings, huskings and threshings de- 
manded the men. The women went along to 
cook. And so days were spent in working 



SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 45 

together and eating together. There was a 
great social value in these meetings. Such days 
were often finished up with parties for the 
young people. Where nothing wrong was en- 
gaged in such assemblings of the youth of a 
community were a good thing. Young people, 
if they are not to become abnormal, need to 
get together. In the long and more leisurely 
winters there were quiltings for the older 
women, spelling bees, debating societies, sing- 
ing schools for all. In many places there were 
and are grange and neighborhood picnics, re- 
unions and old home weeks in the after harvest 
season. 

Many of these social events we are sorry to 
say are now out of fashion. Their absence is 
a distinct loss to country life. 

As remarked above, the normal soul craves 
society. This is especially true of the young. 
Even in the adolescent period the boy wants 
his gang and the girl wants her set. It is a 
craving of the nature as God made it. In pro- 
portion as this social craving is unsatisfied in 
the home, in proportion as the neighborhood 
does not furnish sufficient occasion for whole- 
some social satisfaction, in that proportion will 
the youth seek gratification elsewhere. 

The growing boy on the farm and more so 
in the country town will find other boys who 
feel like himself. The gang will get together. 



46 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

If there is no good place with a pure air and 
healthful recreation, he will meet others in the 
livery barn, in the pool room, or in the saloon. 
Society he craves, his nature cries out for it. 
Society he will have. Here is a family and a 
community responsibility. 

And the sexes will get together. They 
must get together, (rod made them for each 
other. Happy is the home that makes provision 
for and encourages the young men and the 
maidens to meet together in groups as well as 
in pairs. Unhappy the parents that force their 
children to steal away to find the companion- 
ship they crave and have a right to have. 

The father should also frequently take wife 
and children to the city. A day of pure recrea- 
tion is a blessing which will brighten many 
monotonous days on the farm. Why should 
not the faithful and industrious people of the 
farmhouse take periodic outings to attend 
great gatherings, to spend a day at the state 
or county fair, to see the best show, to witness 
good moving picture plays, and to hear the 
best music? The fact that there are so many 
low and degrading amusements does not prove 
that all amusements are bad. There are 
enough good ones that are instructive, uplift- 
ing and ennobling. It makes life richer and 
better to see, hear and engage in them. Fewer 
of the best young people would forsake the 
farm if the monotony were thus periodically 



SOCIAL CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 47 

broken up. It would also enrich the social life. 
It would furnish new view-points and outlooks 
for life. It would furnish food for thought and 
conversation. The social life on the farm need 
not be monotonous. It ought not to be a per- 
petual drudgery. It can be made the brightest 
and happiest life in the world. 

The modern improvements, the rural daily 
mail, the telephone, the trolley car and the 
automobile are all aids in these directions. All 
have their temptations, all can be abused. The 
mail can be used and is used to bring trashy, 
dangerous papers. The telephone may be used 
for eavesdropping and hurtful gossip. The 
auto may take people away from church to 
dangerous and bad places. 

The country needs to train stronger moral 
characters than were needed in the good old 
times. The more diversified life becomes the 
more do temptations multiply. The more these 
temptations are resisted and overcome the 
stronger does the moral character grow. 

The modern conveniences can and ought to 
be used for the improvement of the social life. 
There ought to be more friendly visiting, more 
heartening and helpful neighboring. There 
ought to be more cooperating in every way. 
For all this the modern conveniences furnish 
opportunities that our forbears did not have. 

Of the relation of the school and church to 
the social life we shall speak further on. 



CHAPTER SIX. 

THE EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY. 

" 'Tis education moulds the human mind 

Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined." 

The earliest school is the home. The first 
teacher is the mother. 

What Napoleon said of Prance is true of 
every land: "The greatest need of France is 
mothers.' ' This is eminently true of America. 

In the ideal home, described in the former 
chapter, the children will be properly trained 
and educated from infancy. The preparatory 
work of the home will make it easy for the 
teacher of the public school. 

The country school depends on the school 
trustees or the school board of the district. Dis- 
trict supervision and control is a serious weak- 
ness and handicap. Horace Mann declared the 
law which established the district system "the 
most unfortunate law on the subject of common 
schools ever enacted." 

The average farmer is the traditional enemy 
of the tax collector. As of old the publican is 
hated in the country. Publicans and sinners 
48 



EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTKY 49 

are still classed together. Stingy and ignorant 
people look upon taxation as robbery. Their 
one great desire and effort on the subject is 
to reduce and as far as possible to escape taxa- 
tion. There can be no public school without a 
public school tax. The efficiency of the school 
is largely dependent upon the liberality of 
the tax. 

The farmer gets his money slowly and by 
hard labor. He parts with it reluctantly. 
" Lower taxes" is a familiar country cry. A 
school district in selecting its trustees or di- 
rectors will too often look for men who will 
scale down the tax rate. And so the least pro- 
gressive and the stingiest men often get the 
management of the school. Such miserly men, 
short-sighted as to what is the highest secular 
good, blinded by the love of money and utterly 
unable to appreciate the value and importance 
of a broad and thorough education, will favor 
the cheapest building and equipment. Adapta- 
tion, comfort for teacher, pupil and the public, 
beauty and modern equipment will be sacrificed 
to cheapness. The cheapest teacher will be 
sought for and selected. The shortest term al- 
lowable will be favored. And so the poor chil- 
dren and the poorer teacher are at the mercy of 
the ignorant, narrow, hard-fisted trustee or di- 
rector. Small wonder then that the country 
school is so often a disgrace to twentieth cen- 



50 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

tury American civilization. No wonder that 
the school is so poorly adapted for the uplift 
and enriching of country life. 

With the shabby, untidy and unsanitary 
buildings and grounds, without good black- 
boards, maps, charts and pictures, innocent of 
free stationery, using the cheapest and most 
antiquated text-books, unhygienic as to light 
and ventilation, uncomfortable and unattrac- 
tive in every aspect, what can be expected from 
such untoward equipment? With teachers of 
meagre and defective training, with a motley 
multitude of all grades to be taught in one 
such ill-adapted room by one teacher, with a 
school year all to short for efficient work, what 
can be expected in the way of elevating the 
rising generation? Such unhappy situations 
are by no means universal in the country. But 
they are far more common than most of us 
imagine. We are glad that they are being 
frowned upon more and more and that there is 
an insistent demand for betterment. 

What the country at large needs is to get the 
power of administration out of the hands of 
the unfit district directors. These directors 
need to be restricted and directed from above. 
We cannot have enthusiasm, efficiency and a 
proper school spirit under conditions that are 
a disgrace and ought to be outlawed. Districts 
need to be regulated by townships, these should 



EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTEY 51 

be subject to the county and this again to state 
control. We look forward indeed to ultimate 
national standards, and national regulation. 
Compulsory school laws must also become 
national. The compulsion must come from 
above. 

We rejoice in the spread and growth of the 
central district high school. These consoli- 
dated schools, with free transportation of 
pupils in comfortable, covered conveyances are 
a great boon to the country. They compel the 
building of good school houses and they compel 
good roads. With the popularity of the auto- 
mobile in the country will come further con- 
venience and comfort. These schools bring the 
youth of the larger district together. They put 
an end to the ignorant, narrow and hurtful 
provincialism. They are powerful aids in 
fostering a healthful community spirit. They 
ought to make the old time spirit of suspicion, 
bitterness and feud, bred by isolation, a thing 
of the past. They tend to embellish and enrich 
the life in the country in every way. It goes 
without saying that everything depends upon 
the professional efficiency and moral and re- 
ligious character of the teachers. No unbeliev- 
ing, scoffing teacher ought ever to be allowed 
to teach in the public school. If the teacher of 
the public school, as an employe of the state, 
cannot be allowed to teach religion, he certainly 



LUTHERAN CTII T RCH IN THE COUNTRY 

should never be allowed to teach or to voice 
hostility to the Bible and its religion.* 

The moral character of the drivers who haul 
the pupils back and forth needs also to be care- 
fully watched. No man of profane or unclean 
lip or life, no man of intemperate habits should 
ever be employed. The crowded, covered 
wagon may become a breeding place of im- 
purity. And here we might note in passing 
that vice and imparity often become epidemic 
in a country district. The writer of this has 
personally known of several country schools 
where impurity became so common that it was 
common rumor that all the pupils were impure. 

Another matter that deserves serious atten- 
tion is that the country should educate for 
country life. Too often the teacher and the 
textbook bring and keep the ideas and ideals 
of the city before the pupils. The city with 
its attractions, its ways and its life, is con- 
stantly kept in view. The stories, the illustra- 
tions, the examples in Mathematics are all given 
in the terms of the city. They echo the city's 
surging life. They drum into the children 
stocks and bonds and commerce, instead of 
dealing with soil and silo, dairy and live stock. 

The teachers bring to the country the man- 
ners and fashions and styles of the city. They 

* For a fuller discussion of this subject see my "Prob- 
lems and Possibilities," pp. 110-114. 



EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 53 

are in the country against their will. The 
country school is to be a stepping stone to the 
city school. Their talk is patronizing if not 
belittling toward those who must spend their 
life in the lonely and dreary country. Enam- 
ored of city life they reflect its attractions and 
its lure. The power of suggestion works easily 
and surely. The city and city life is thought 
about, talked about, dreamed about. The 
desire and aim to get away from country dull- 
ness and drudgery to city interest, excitement 
and an easier life take full possession. And 
so the country school trains the young away 
from the soil. The country school becomes an 
agency to stimulate the away from the land 
movement. The country school tends to de- 
populate the country. 

Country people want their children to like 
the country life. They have a right to expect 
the school to promote this country love. It 
will never be promoted by teachers who have 
the city fever. The country school needs to be 
made so attractive and so remunerative that it 
will draw the best of teachers. These ought to 
be native to the soil, to the manner born. They 
ought to understand and appreciate the best 
that is and ought to be in the country life. 
They need to have a vision of the possibilities 
of life on the land, a vision of their own high 
privilege of bringing this to pass. 



54 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

Normal schools are needed that will train 
country-bred boys and girls to become country 
teachers. Such normals should promote rural 
interests and rural ideals, country sense and 
country sympathy. Their graduates ought to 
be in sympathy with and ought to know the 
ideals and theories of "The American Rural 
School," by H. W. Foght. They ought to know 
the writings of 0. J. Kern and of Mabel Carney. 
They ought to know the science of agriculture. 
The good rural Normal will work hand in hand 
with the agricultural college and experiment 
station. Its graduates will become enthusiastic 
for making country life what it ought to be and 
what it can be. 

In their schools good teachers will instil love 
for the country and country life. Their talk 
will be of flowers and plants and trees and birds 
and animals and pets and live stock. They will 
teach the chemistry of soils, and scientific pre- 
paration and culture of the soil, scientific fer- 
tilizing, scientific matching of seed and soil. 
They will teach the biology and botany of seeds 
and plants, the soils and fertilizers and culture 
they need. They will teach the zoology of farm 
animals, their rearing and their care. They 
will teach the architecture of the farm house 
and other farm buildings, the home conveni- 
ences and furnishings needed and how to use 
them. Domestic science will have a large place 



EDUCATIONAL, CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 55 

in their teaching. The laws of hygiene will 
be made clear and driven home. Landscaping 
and the beautifying of the home on the inside 
and on the outside will be explained and im- 
pressed. 

Such teachers will be a great aid toward im- 
proving the economic situation in the country. 
They will gradually improve the rural social 
mind. They will aid greatly in enriching the 
social life of the community. 

They will encourage the making of the school 
house an intellectual and social centre. They 
will encourage extension lectures from the 
state university, the agricultural college and 
the experiment station. They will encourage 
farmers, breeders and poultry men to take 
short winter courses in agricultural colleges. 
They will constantly preach and impress the 
value of higher education. They will use every 
endeavor to show the farmer fathers that a 
liberal education is the best legacy they can 
leave to their sons and daughters. From their 
school-districts many boys and girls will go to 
college and university. Doctors, lawyers, pro- 
fessors and preachers will spring forth from 
their communities, all inspired and started by 
their teachers in the country schools. 

Next to the minister of the Gospel, the 
church-school teacher, the deaconess and the 
Christian social service and inner mission 



56 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

worker, the country school teacher has the 
richest and most promising field for the service 
and uplift of humanity. 

Over one-half of the people of the United 
States still live in the country. The purest, 
the host, the richest red blood is still there. 
The bulk of the best brains is still there. And 
the best moral fibre is still there. A few years 
ago five hundred leading business and profes- 
sional men sat down to a Y. M. C. A. banquet 
in New York. A census was taken during the 
evening and it was discovered that nine out of 
ten of the men of affairs and of power in the city 
were born and bred in the open country or in 
the country town. A canvass of one hundred 
men in a great city showed that eighty-five of 
these bankers, lawyers, merchants and journal- 
ists were brought up in the country. City 
pastors testify again and again that their most 
dependable members were brought up in coun- 
try churches. It is claimed by those who have 
studied the subject that "at least seventy-five 
per cent, of the men and women of influence 
in church and national life were born and 
reared in the country/ ' "Country bred men 
have dominated our entire civilization. ' ' John 
E. Mott says, "The cities cannot be relied upon 
to furnish the Christian leaders of the future. 
The work in the country districts must be 
carried on with efficiency and power in order 



EDUCATIONAL CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 57 

to insure the raising up of sufficient Christian 
forces to cultivate the city fields." Doctor 
Gunsaulus claims that Chicago's twelve great- 
est preachers, eighty-six of its leading physi- 
cians, eighty-one of its greatest lawyers, and 
seventy-three of its one hundred best engineers, 
all came from the farm. It is a well-known 
fact that a large proportion of ministers were 
country boys. 

What a field for the country school-teacher. 
What a field for the country pastor. 



CHAPTER SEVEN. 

BELIGIOUS CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY. 

We have seen that the rural mind is inclined 
to be meditative, Berious, religious. The coun- 
try man should naturally draw toward the 
church. The church that has a message should 
appeal to him strongly. It should be full of 
men. 

In the recollection of those now living such 
was largely the case. Nearly everybody in the 
community was a church-goer if not a church 
member. In New England the ringing of the 
bells of the plain, square, roomy meeting 
houses emptied the farm homes for many 
miles in every direction. The roads were 
crowded with great wagon loads of people of 
every age. Others came on horseback and 
many walked their weary miles on dusty or 
muddy highways. The ample church-grounds, 
with their long rows of sheds, presented an ani- 
mated and an edifying sight. The quiet happi- 
ness and peace on the faces of the gathering or 
departing worshippers all seemed to say, "I 
was glad when they said unto me Let us go into 
the House of the Lord. Our feet shall stand 
58 



RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 59 

within thy gates Jerusalem. ' ' "A day in 
thy courts is better than a thousand.' ' "I 
would rather be a door-keeper in the house of 
the Lord than to dwell in the tents of wicked- 
ness.' ' 

The Puritans of New England for several 
generations were great church-goers. The 
Scotch-Irish set great store by the church and 
the Bible. Their country settlements were 
characterized by strong churches, deep devo- 
tion, and sturdy defense of their religion. The 
Presbyterian church from the beginning was 
strong in the country. The Methodists, while 
not neglecting the country, were more like the 
Eoman Catholics and Episcopalians in their 
early and constant appreciation of the city and 
the growing town. It is hard to find a town of 
any size, outside of those that are populated by 
foreigners, in which there is not an aggressive 
Methodist church. In all the largest cities they 
are strong. They are not a strong church in 
the open country. The Baptists in this respect 
are like unto the Methodists, except that they 
have a greater tendency to colonize in the 
country. Of the Lutherans we shall speak 
more specifically later on. Suffice it to say 
here that they are on the whole the most rural 
of all Protestant churches and are maintaining 
their strength and growth in the country better 
than any other church. In this chapter we are 



60 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

looking into the general situation as it exists 
in the open country and in the country town. 

Outside of the Lutheran settlements the sit- 
uation is positively alarming. A sad change 
has come over the country churches of our land. 
In the better olden times in the country the 
man that did not go to church was looked down 
upon and was made to feel that his attitude to 
the church brought upon him more or less of 
public odium. He was more or less ostracised, 
and either had to flock by himself or be con- 
stantly on the defensive. 

It is not so now. In many sections the case 
is reversed. The pendulum has swung to the 
other extreme. A startling change has come. 
The situation is serious. A blighting heathen- 
ism is spreading over our land. It is high time 
that American Christians look the facts in the 
face. And facts are still stubborn things. Soft 
and smooth sayings cannot blot out facts. A 
visionary optimism will not change things. 
There is a horrid hurt on our Christian civili- 
zation. It cannot be healed with salves and 
ointments. There must be first of all a rigid 
and unsparing diagnosis. Surgery and cauter- 
izing and purging are needed. 

For the diagnosing of the case the Presby- 
terian Church has rendered an invaluable ser- 
vice to American Christianity. She has commis- 
sioned a number of experts to make religious 



RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 61 

rural life surveys. These surveys were made 
by trained specialists. They have cost much 
time, labor and money. They set forth the 
present religious situation in representative 
sections in different parts of the land. Their 
disclosures are accurate, instructive and start- 
ling. We have examined a goodly number of 
them. We are indebted to them and to books 
that deal with the country church and that 
draw from these surveys for our facts. 

We look first to old New England, in many 
respects the cradle of our free institutions and 
of American church life. In the year 1900 the 
Governor of New Hampshire issued a procla- 
mation which set forth the religious destitution 
in certain New England communities and sum- 
moned the people to observe a day of fasting 
and prayer. When the governor was widely 
criticized for his " pessimistic' ' proclamation 
Eollin Lynde Hartt published a series of arti- 
cles in the Outlook in which he established and 
justified the contentions of the governor. He 
stated that there were two hundred and eighty- 
two pastorless churches in Maine at that time, 
and that some of the deserted churches were 
serving as cheese factories, road-houses and 
dance-halls. Ashenhurst, who gives us these 
facts, says: "The extreme examples of re- 
ligious destitution indicate a tendency and a 
peril. Practically the same conditions are said 



62 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

to exist in Vermont and in large sections of 
rural New York. In 1910 a New England 
church association investigated the general 
situation. The report affirms that outside of a 
radius of two or three miles around the towns 
of New England a practical heathenism is in 
full sway. ( >ne lone minister, the pastor of the 
only Protestant church for many miles around 
had a little band of women and two men in his 
church. Our periodic literature in recent 
years has teemed with delineations and lamen- 
tations on the sad situation of the church in 
New England. New Elngland can be saved 
from heathenizing by nothing else than the old 
Gospel of Christ. We are glad to know that 
the old Church of the Reformation, with the 
old faith that made the Reformation, is crowd- 
ing into the farm homes and cities of New 
England. Thousands of soul-hungry, blue 
blood Yankees will yet find satisfaction, salva- 
tion and service in the incoming English Lu- 
theran Churches. 

Turning now to the Middle West we look 
first at the pivotal state of Ohio. Here New 
England Congregationalism made its second 
stand, modified and tried to readapt its theology 
and started out anew for the winning of the 
West. Here English Lutheranism made such 
a promising start under the sainted Dr. Green- 
wald and later by Dr. Ezra Keller. Here 



BELIGIOUS CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 63 

Scotch-Irish Presbyterianism planted its early 
colonies and institutions of Learning. Here the 
country church was strong and big with pro- 
mise. And what is the country condition today ? 
In a religious survey of nineteen counties 
out of fifteen hundred and fifteen churches it 
was ascertained that one-third were increasing. 
Of the other two-thirds a comparatively small 
number were holding their own. The rest were 
dwindling in numbers and influence. In a dis- 
trict of one hundred square miles, by actual 
count, less than four per cent, of the people 
were communicant members of any church. 
Eight hundred abandoned churches were 
counted. The author of * ' The Survey Bulletin ' ' 
writes: "Of all these one thousand five hun- 
dred and fifteen churches at the present time 
slightly less than one-third are growing. The 
remaining two-thirds have either ceased to 
grow or are dying. The decline of the farmers' 
church is the most striking fact to be recorded. 
Those churches upon which the farming popu- 
lation is dependent show no rapid changes and 
the most marked signs of decadence. Of the 
open country church not quite one-fourth are 
growing. The study of county after county 
compels the conclusion that where other things 
are equal, the larger the proportion of farmers 
in the membership of the church, the smaller 
chance does the church have to maintain itself 



64 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

with its strength unimpaired. The farmer to- 
day is our most difficult church problem." 

In Indiana conditions are if anything worse. 
Indiana has been called "the state of sects and 
insects. " Here the most extreme, most radical 
and most ignorant revivalist, immersionist and 
sanctificationist sects multiply and carry on 
their wild and irrational propaganda. They 
leave whole sections of burnt districts in their 
trail. In these burnt-over sections ignorant 
unbelief as well as coarse and unblushing vice 
often abound. 

Harlan N. Freeman in "the Kingdom and 
the Farm/' page 77, says: "The Presby- 
terian Survey in Indiana discovered in Mar- 
shall County that of the ninety-one churches, 
thirty-seven per cent, were growing, twenty 
per cent, were standing still, w r hile forty-two 
per cent, were losing ground. The same condi- 
tions of decline, with variations, were found in 
Davies and Boone Counties." 

A recent issue of "The Standard," the organ 
of the Disciples (Campbellites), devoted twelve 
pages to a discussion of their country church 
problem. Out of seven hundred and ninety-six 
churches in Indiana, one hundred and ninety- 
eight had preaching once a month, two hundred 
and twenty-five have no regular preaching, and 
thirty-five are abandoned. In one district there 
are thirty-six churches and only six pastors. 



RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 65 

In another forty-one churches and seven pas- 
tors. And Indiana is the banner state of the 
Campbellites ! 

The Presbyterian synod of Michigan recently 
reported one-third of all its churches vacant. 
The Baptists of the same state reported a great 
falling off, a loss of one thousand members. 

In the state of Illinois there are forty towns 
of from two to eight hundred inhabitants that 
are without a church of any kind. In the whole 
state seventeen hundred churches have been 
abandoned in a few years. A survey of forty- 
four communities in the corn belt of the state 
where 

"King Corn's armies lie with flags unfurled," 

two hundred and twenty-five churches were 
examined. Of these seventy-seven had grown 
in the last ten years, fifty-six had lost in 
membership and forty-seven or nearly one- 
fourth had been abandoned. In this district 
the summing up of the situation shows that one- 
third of the churches, counting both town and 
country, are growing, and two -thirds are dying 
or dead. 

In Missouri a survey of three counties showed 
more than half of the churches losing in mem- 
bership. Twenty-one churches were found 
abandoned. In a single township of five thous- 



66 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

and inhabitants only three hundred people are 
connected with any church. In the whole state 
seven hundred and fifty churches have been 
abandoned. 

The above are typical examples from the 
better part of the nation. Outside of the sec- 
tions where the German Lutheran and Scandi- 
navian settlers abound, the situation becomes 
worse and worse the farther west we go. It 
has often been said that west of Iowa and 
Minnesota there is no Sunday and west of the 
Dakotas there is no God! Sixty per cent, of 
the people of America are rapidly heathenizing. 

In an address made before the Connecticut 
Bible Society the Rev. H. L. Hutchins, who had 
spent many years as a colporteur in the rural 
sections of that state said, in substance, of the 
districts where the churches were dying or 
dead: "The whole aspect of those communi- 
ties is disheartening. The people are ignorant 
and have no ambition to be anything else. 
Vices increase and become more and more open 
and flagrant. Immorality is unashamed. There 
is an open contempt and disregard of marriage, 
an alarming growth of idiocy, the result of in- 
breeding and incest. Cheap whiskey is omni- 
present, violence and crime more and more fre- 
quent. There is an inevitable lapsing toward 
paganism and barbarism.' ' 

Such is the country where God is not. There 



RELIGIOUS CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRY 67 

are hundreds of localities like that. We know 
some of them. Does not the reader recall some 
such places ! There Christ is not wanted. The 
voice of His Bride, the Church, is not heard. 



flart Qtl}r?? 

(Cjuwb of fflmrotrg (EonottionB 



Because thou art lukewarm and neither cold 
nor hot I will spew thee out of 'my mouth. — 
Jesus, 

There is less practical discouragement in the 
opposition of bad people than in the inertia of 
good people. — Dr. Boyd. 

For my people have committed two evils: 
They have forsaken me, the fountain of living 
waters, and hewn themselves out cisterns, 
broken cisterns that can hold no water. — Jere- 
miah. 

Because when they knew God they glorified 
Him not as God, neither were thankful; but 
became vain in their reasonings and their 
senseless heart was darkened. Professing 
themselves to be wise they became fools. — Paul. 

And we know that we are of God and the 

whole world lieth in the evil one Little 

children keep yourselves from idols. — John. 



CHAPTER EIGHT. 

CAUSES OF CHURCH DECLINE. 

That the decline of the country church is 
widespread and alarming can no longer be 
denied. Our Lutheran Church is as yet the 
least affected. Of this we shall speak more 
fully in subsequent chapters. We are devoutly 
thankful for the fact. But our country people 
and pastors are of the same sinful stock as 
others. They are influenced, even as others, 
by condition and environment. They are sub- 
ject to country temptations as are their neigh- 
bors. What has happened to others ought to 
be a warning to us. We Lutherans ought to 
know our dangers. We cannot effectually 
guard ourselves against them unless we know 
them. It behooves us to inquire and search 
diligently for the causes of country church 
decline. 

It will not do to brush aside the subject by 
saying that it is enough to know and admit the 
sinfulness of human nature. It is true that the 
carnal mind is enmity against God and that 
men love darkness rather than light. The coun- 
try heart is as sinful by nature as is the city 
71 



72 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

heart. But this fundamental fact does not ex- 
plain the threatening change that is going on in 
the religous life of the country. People had the 
same sinful nature in the better days when the 
country churches were full of devout worship- 
pers. There are things that encourage sinful 
nature and promote its development. There 
are things that discourage and curb the growth 
of sin. 

The economic situation of the country un- 
doubtedly affects the church. Where there is 
thin naturally unproductive soil and slip-shod 
unscientific farming together with improvident 
management, the community is poor, discour- 
aged and depressed. People brood over their 
poverty, become fretful and rebellious and are 
hard to interest in higher things. It is a short 
step from rebellion against God to rebellion 
against the church. When such apathetic and 
phlegmatic people are invited to church they 
frame all sorts of excuses. They have no time, 
no clothes, no conveyances. The true reason is 
they are bitter and don't want to go. 

Absentee landlordism is a misfortune to a 
community. To be stable, to have a neighbor- 
hood interest, a social mind, a desire for public 
improvement and common weal, a community- 
needs permanent homes and residents who ex- 
pect to live and die where they are. 

Eenters are not so. They are not rooted to 



CAUSES OF CHURCH DECLINE 73 

the soil. Their dwellings are not their real 
homes. They are ready to move whenever they 
think they can make a better bargain. They 
have little if any interest in the community. It 
is hard to interest them in the church. A com- 
munity of renters is a hard place for a country 
church. The increase of tenant farming is a 
contributing cause to the decline of the country 
church. 

Ignorant and unscientific farming makes the 
soil poor, whether the farmer be owner or 
tenant. Such farming makes a community poor 
and is a serious drawback to the church. In 
short, whatever tends to make life hard and un- 
productive is a drawback. Overwork is a draw- 
back. Lack of material comfort brings un- 
happiness. An unhappy heart or home or com- 
munity is a discouraging field for a church. 

The psychology of the rural mind is a church 
problem. The individualist is hard to interest 
in the group, even if that group is a church. He 
is apt to be suspicious of all who do not share 
his views. He is stubbornly opinionated. If 
for any reason he is suspicious of church people 
or of pastor he is hard to move. Living and 
working with nature day by day he knows and 
notes that nature knows no mercy. Nature 
never forgives. Possibly this is an explanation 
of the unforgiving spirit so common in the 
country. This spirit is productive of faction 



74 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

and feud. This spirit is a serious problem for 
the country church. It has held back many a 
country church. It has weakened and killed 
many. 

The farmer and his wife and children all earn 
and eat their bread in the sweat of their brow. 
^Vith a large proportion of them their money 
comes slowly and with hard, long labor. A 
natural tendency is to hold fast to what he 
toils for. The farmer as a rule is less liberal 
in giving than others. He often becomes a 
miser. As no church can be kept up without 
money he suspects that the church is after his 
cash. He dreads the cost of church member- 
ship and refuses to become a member. If such 
an one is a member he is apt to oppose every 
forward movement that requires money, and 
all missionary effort. And so he is a drawback 
to the church. 

It follows as a matter of course that when 
people with these or other unfavorable traits 
move to the country town they present a church 
problem there. A town made up largely of 
retired farmers is proverbially non-progressive. 
It is hard to make a church aggressive, pro- 
gressive, and generally efficient in such a town. 
It has all the drawbacks presented by the rural 
mind. 

The social situation of the country is fre- 
quently a hard problem for the church. The 



CAUSES OF CHURCH DECLINE 75 

daily toil and family isolation may turn the 
family into unsocial hermits. When they settle 
down to this it is hard to get them to church. 
On the other hand, the monotony and drudgery 
may create a wild desire for diversion and ex- 
citement. Saturday night and Sunday bring 
opportunities. The country towns are always 
crowded on Saturday afternoon. The picture 
shows, plays, pool rooms and saloons reap their 
harvest on Saturday night. The farmers ' Ford 
automobile furnishes the easy transportation, 

Sunday is the day for visiting and courting. 
These diversions become such a habit with 
many people that it is next to impossible to 
get them to church. They afford a standing 
excuse for many families. They must visit or 
receive and entertain visitors. And so the 
social situation presents a problem and is if 
not a cause, at least an explanation of the de- 
cline of the country church. 

We realize, however, that while all these 
country conditions make church work difficult 
they are not fundamental. In many cases they 
can be changed and overcome. The country 
church can be made to grow in spite of these 
drawbacks. 

For the real causes of the decline we must 
look deeper. We believe that we shall find them 
in the school and in the church herself. 

A change has come over the world of educa- 



76 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

tion. There is a change in the content and 
spirit of the text books. We take down our old 
readers and spellers. We recall the head line 
copy of the old writing book. In the readers 
many lessons were extracts from the Bible, 
others were appreciations and eulogies of the 
Bible. Still others were warnings against the 
neglect of or encouragements to the use of the 
Bible. Many were the stories, the poems and 
the "pieces" to speak, all exalting the Word 
and its teachings. The illustrations in reader 
and speller were often Bible pictures. The 
"copies" in the copy-books were often sen- 
tences from, sayings about, or encouragements 
to learn and follow the Bible. Even the "Ex- 
amples" in mental arithmetic often dealt with 
Bible subjects. The "three R's" were more or 
less colored by the Bible. It is not so now. We 
look in vain for anything of the kind in the text 
book of today. 

The whole atmosphere of the state schools of 
today is irreligious, if not anti-religious.* 
Text books and teachers are permeated with 
anti-Christian sentiments. The science taught 
is Darwinian materialism. The psychology is 
pragmatistic. The philosophy is Hegelian. 
The sociology is Spencerian agnosticism. 
There is no place left for revelation or miracle 

* See "Problems and Possibilities," page 122 ff. 



CAUSES OF CHURCH DECLINE 77 

The supernatural is eliminated. All is pure 
naturalism and often pure animalism. 

Such are the educational principles and such 
the spirit in the state normal schools in which 
the country school teachers are trained. Those 
who do not have a clear and positive Christian 
training, a well-established Christian character 
and a scriptural personal experience before 
they enter the normal are often carried away 
with the prevailing stream of unbelief. 

They come out to the little red school house 
on the hill to teach the boys and girls of the 
farmers. If the teacher is an unbeliever the 
fact will be more or less apparent. It may not 
express itself in open opposition to church and 
Bible. But the teacher creates an atmosphere. 
The personality speaks. Unconscious insinua- 
tions creep into explanation and conversation. 
At best the pupils see that the teacher pays 
neither attention nor respect to the church. 
The teacher advises the next higher school. 
The teacher's advice generally goes. He se- 
lects a school library, advises what books should 
be read, becomes a social adviser and leader. 
The influence is all against the church. The 
seeds of indifference to the church and of gen- 
eral unbelief and worldliness are implanted in 
the school. The same sentiments and the same 
spirit are infused into the social mind of the 
youth in the community. And the church finds 



7S LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

herself in an unfriendly if not a hostile at- 
mosphere. Here is a direct and potent cause 
of the decline of the country church. 



CHAPTER NINE. 

causes of chukch decline (Continued). 

Judgment must always begin in the house of 
God. The church needs most of all to examine 
herself. In how far may the causes of church 
decline lie at her own door ? Shall we not look 
here for the fundamental cause f 

We are not yet speaking of specifically Lu- 
theran conditions and causes. To these we 
shall come later. On many points, however, we 
Lutherans are as guilty as others. When we 
probe for general causes it behooves us to be 
honest with ourselves, and constantly ask, are 
we not also guilty here? 

One mistake as to a ministry for the country 
is that so many church boards, church officials 
and church schools have harbored the idea that 
any kind of a minister is good enough for the 
country. Preachers for the country are not 
supposed to need as much preparation as 
preachers for the city. Short-cut schools and 
short-cut methods are deemed sufficient for the 
country pastor. 

In an investigation of the country pastors in 
New England it was discovered that nearly one- 
79 



80 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

half were without a full college education, only 
twenty-five per cent, were seminary graduates 
and "seventy-five per cent, were lacking in 
efficiency from inadequate educational equip- 
ment.' ' Prof. G. W. Fiske, author of "The 
Challenge of the Country" says on page 198 
of the book: "As near as can be determined 
about twenty per cent, of rural ministers the 
country over are educated men; though prob- 
ably ten per cent, of them have had a full pro- 
fessional training." Truly a startling state- 
ment! In the middle west and on to the west 
coast graduates of the Moody Bible Institute 
are trying to serve country pastorates. A large 
proportion of them are dismal failures. 

We have seen that country people as a class 
are serious and thoughtful. They think pa- 
tiently and deeply on the problems brought 
before them. They are full of hard questions. 
They are drawn toward the man who can sit 
down and sympathetically and intelligently 
enter into their difficulties and help them to a 
way out. They will go to hear such men preach. 
If the preaching enlightens, instructs, answers 
questionings of their own minds and satisfies 
the deeper yearnings of their earnest souls 
these men will be won. But this requires edu- 
cated ministers, men of broad culture, clear 
thinkers as well as men of tender sympathy. 
The minister needs to understand the individual 



CAUSES OF CHURCH DECLINE (CONTINUED) 81 

and the social psychology of the country mind. 
He needs to have an intelligent grasp of the 
problems peculiar to the country. He needs 
special training along these lines. A mere ex- 
horter, be he never so earnest, will not and can 
not satisfy the serious, thinking men of the 
country. They want a spiritual guide who can 
understand, enter into and sympathize with 
their perplexities and can patiently show them 
the true solution. 

And withal, the farmer wants a minister who 
knows and loves the country. The country 
pastor needs to be much in the homes and fields 
of the people. He ought to be able to talk in- 
telligently on soils and culture and fertilizing 
and plant and animal pests. He ought to know 
about horses and hens and hogs and cattle. He 
ought to be able to show how labor can be 
lightened in field and barn and house. He 
ought to be able to show how country life in 
the home and on the farm can be made more 
comfortable and more happy without impair- 
ing its efficiency and profitableness. All this 
by no means as a substitute for the spiritual 
side of his private and public ministry but as 
an aid to it. 

We recall a scholarly and deeply consecrated 
young German pastor in the country. He had 
a rationalistic and skeptical neighbor whom he 
had not been able to get to come to church. 



82 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

One day the preacher found the farmer sitting 
on a fence and looking intently over a field. The 
pastor took a seat at the farmer's side. The 
farmer confided that he had been in a deep 
study as to what to do with that particular field 
which had disappointed him for several years. 
The preacher informed the farmer that the field 
needed specific treatment. The soil was pecu- 
liar, it needed deep plowing, more frequent and 
deeper cultivation and a certain kind of fertil- 
izer that would supply what was lacking in the 
soil. The farmer listened with open mouth and 
ears. He afterwards expressed his surprise 
to a neighbor that that young snip of a 
preacher had really instructed him in farming. 
Before long that farmer brought his family, a 
wagon full, to church. The pastor won the 
family by winning its head. As he told us "he 
had to begin with manure." 

Have our colleges and seminaries trained 
such men? Have we not all too often held up 
the city pastorate as the ideal, and the country 
pastorate as a temporary make-shift and a 
waiting place for a city call? Insofar as the 
Seminary has taken such a position it is re- 
sponsible for country decline. It is time for 
our seminaries to change. They need to realize 
that as goes the country so goes the city. The 
blood from the country has been the saving of 



CAUSES OF CHURCH DECLINE (CONTINUED) 83 

the city. If the country salt loses its savor 
wherewith shall the city be salted? 

Because such a large proportion of Seminary 
graduates have gone out unwillingly into coun- 
try work, with a prejudice against it we have 
the sad fact of short pastorates. The short 
pastorate is a calamity anywhere. But es- 
pecially in the country where it takes time to 
get acquainted and to win confidence. The 
abounding short pastorates are a prolific cause 
of country decline. 

Because so many ministers have an aversion 
to living in the country we find such a large 
proportion who do not live among their people 
but have their homes in the distant town. Dr. 
Wilson, of the Presbyterian board of home 
missions, who speaks with authority, affirms 
that of their one hundred and ninety-two 
country ministers in Missouri only two live 
with their people in the open country. One of 
the Ohio Surveys claims that only six per cent, 
of the country churches of that state have resi- 
dent pastors. The statement is made that 
"mail order preaching is killing the country 
churches. ' ' 

The absentee pastor cannot be the seelsorger 
that his church and community need. How can 
he be a fisher of men, fishing for every un- 
churched soul within reach of his parish? How 
can he, as a good under-shepherd "know his 



84 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

sheep/ ' know them by name, and be known of 
them? How can he feed his sheep and feed his 
lambs? How can he know when a sheep or 
lamb is going astray and is in danger of being 
lost, or is lost! How can he go out after the 
lost, every one of them and seek until he find 
them? In so far as he does not constantly, 
patiently, persistently and prayerfully do all 
this he is a faithless shepherd if not a hireling. 
We cannot understand the conception of the 
pastoral office work and responsibility of the 
pastor who does not live among his people. 
Absentee pastors are guilty of promoting the 
decline of the country church. 

Preaching on secular subjects is another 
cause. The man who preaches on the need and 
benefits of the Grange, on good roads, better 
markets, and more favorable shipping facilities 
for farm produce; the man of God who dis- 
courses on the possibilities of the gasoline en- 
gine, the motor truck or the best method of 
fighting the corn aphis or wheat rust or peach 
borer or plum curculio or pear blight or San 
Jose scale or cattle tick or foot and mouth dis- 
ease or any other such secular subject had bet- 
ter quit calling himself a minister of the Gospel. 
The man who uses the sacred desk for spinning 
out his speculations on rural recreation and 
country cooperation had better step down from 
the pulpit and seek a place on the chautauqua 



CAUSES OF CHURCH DECLINE (CONTINUED) 85 

platform or on the extension lecture force of 
the agricultural college. As we have seen, it is 
a good thing for the pastor to be informed on 
all these and kindred topics. He ought to be 
able to talk intelligently on them to his people 
as he goes from house to house — provided al- 
ways that he does not let these subjects crowd 
out his spiritual, personal, seelsorger messages. 
It may be a good thing also for him, if he is 
thoroughly competent, to lecture on week nights 
in the school house or elsewhere. But to make 
these things the staple of his preaching is to 
be recreant to his trust. This does not mean 
that he should not bring them in as matter of 
illustration and application. Happy is he who 
is apt in so doing. But he dare not use them 
for dispensing with the Gospel. The old Ger- 
man Bationalists did so and nearly killed the 
country church in Germany. Such preaching 
will kill the country church in our land also. 

Another kind of preaching that is treason to 
God and killing to the country church is the 
preaching of the new, liberal theology. This 
theology has spread from the city to the coun- 
try. It boasts itself of having broken the fet- 
ters that bound it to a dead past. It is free 
from all tradition. It scoffs at creeds and con- 
fessions of faith. Its children's minds are not 
to be hampered or darkened by gloomy cate- 
chisms. It has thrown away the old doctrines 



86 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

of sin and native depravity. Man has within 
himself all the potencies and the powers to 
make him what he ought to be. All he needs to 
do is to evolve his better self out of himself. 
With his own inherent strength and reason he 
can make of himself all that he ought to be. 
Modern education will soon bring in a new race. 
Ethical culture will make a new civilization. 
Those who still trouble society with violence 
and crime are the victims of wrong breeding. 
They are defective without any fault of their 
own. It is unworthy of this age to punish them. 
They are to be pitied. They need treatment 
and cure in hospitals. Their maladies will 
soon be better understood and will then be 
eliminated by the beneficent regime of special- 
ists. Eugenics will prevent the births of other 
defectives. When once the new teaching gets 
full sway all will be well-born and there will be 
no more hurtful environment. 

Such inane stuff is being preached from 
thousands of pulpits. The old Bible doctrines 
of inherited sin, of the corruption of human 
nature, of its utter inability to change or save 
itself, of its crushing guilt and certain doom if 
left to itself, these age old beliefs are held up 
as relics of dark ages and are not so much as 
to be named by the cultured sons of the twen- 
tieth century. 

Since there is no sin in the old sense man 



CAUSES OF CHURCH DECLINE ( CONTINUED) 87 

needs no Saviour. Every man is his own Sav- 
iour. Good example and good teaching are 
beneficent and uplifting. The world has always 
had such encouraging and helpful exemplars. 
Jesus of Nazareth was one of them. The idea 
that he was virgin-born is too silly to be laughed 
at. He was divine, was the Son of God in no 
other sense than this, that you and I all can be 
divine, sons of God even as He was. He was 
ahead of his time and died a martyr to his 
teaching. He set us an example that we also 
should be willing to sacrifice ourselves for the 
uplifting of humanity. The idea of a vicarious 
atonement is too abhorent to mention. 

Kingcraft and priestcraft have kept men in 
ignorance in the past in order that the strong 
might exploit the weak and that the smart 
might live riotously from the labors of the ig- 
norant. The exploiters have fooled the people 
by making them believe that if they would be 
submissive and work hard they would get an 
easy and a happy place in Heaven. 

But such fables we no longer believe. We 
are now using our science and our effort here 
to make this world and our life here a heaven. 
Our social science and social service will soon 
make everybody good and happy. As to a 
future life, we don't know. We are too busy 
making this life worth living for all. We 



88 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

should rather wear diamonds in Chicago than 
jewels in Heaven. 

Such is the stuff that is doled out in many of 
the depleted churches in the country. It is no 
wonder that the lodge is supplanting the 
church. No wonder that the country is heathen- 
izing. History is only repeating itself. 



Jart 3ffo»r 



The patriotic American who thinks of the 
life of the nation rather than of the individual 
will, if he looks beneath the surface, discern in 
this God-prospered country symptoms of rural 
decadence frought with danger to national effi- 
ciency. — Horace Plunket. 

Give therefore thy servant an understanding 
heart to judge thy people that I may discern 
between good and evil. — Solomon. 

The children of Issachar were men that had 
understanding of the times, to know what Israel 
ought to do. — First Chronicles. 



CHAPTER TEN. 

LUTHERANS AND LAND. 

As a class our Lutherans love the country. A 
large proportion of them live in the country. 
No other church has so large a proportion of 
her membership in the country. It is doubtful 
also whether any other church has as large a 
ratio of land owners. Lutherans are a thrifty 
people. They hate debt. They are averse to 
paying rent and interest. They have a consum- 
ing ambition to own their homes. If they start 
as land renters they end as land owners. Their 
quiet conservative character makes country life 
agreeable to them. They are adapted to the 
soil. They make good farmers and gardeners. 
They succeed where others fail. Thousands of 
farms, abandoned by Yankees have been bought 
by Lutherans and been made to yield like the 
gardens of the gods. Rural New England is 
being rehabilitated by thrifty Lutheran homes 
and families. Lutheran farmers made Eastern 
Pennsylvania rich. They have been the makers 
of the prosperous districts of the Middle West. 
They planted prosperity in the newer states of 
the great West. They are a powerful asset to 
91 



92 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

the states in which they are strong. They are 
getting rich. 

It is a matter of absorbing interest to study 
these people. America and Americans need to 
understand them. They can learn many needed 
lessons from them. To understand them means 
to appreciate them. 

The earliest Lutheran immigrants did not 
come to America from love of adventure or 
from love of gold. They were driven from their 
fatherlands by persecution. The Dutch who 
settled New Amsterdam and laid the founda- 
tions of the Empire State with its colossal city 
were driven from Holland by religious oppres- 
sion. The palatines who became the famous 
so-called thrifty "Pennsylvania Dutch" who 
made the Keystone State so prosperous came 
for conscience's sake. Like the Pilgrim 
Fathers they wanted freedom to worship God. 
The Salzburgers, who colonized in Georgia, 
whose deep spiritual life made such an impres- 
sion on both AVesley and Whiten* eld and who 
thus indirectly contributed to the good that was 
in early Methodism had been banished from 
home and homeland because they prized their 
evangelical faith above all earthly possessions. 
Several generations later the Germans who 
settled on the banks of the Mississippi and 
made the mighty Missouri synod were also 



LUTHERANS AND LAND 93 

moved by love of religious freedom. They too 
wanted liberty of conscience. 

Thousands of Scandinavians also have come 
to America because they did not like the spirit 
and conduct of the state church in the home- 
land. They all appreciate a free church in a 
free land. 

The Lutheran Church in America is the only 
church whose pulpits and professors' chairs 
are free from negative critical teaching and 
tendency. The so-called New Theology finds 
no advocate in our churches or schools. No Lu- 
theran synod will tolerate as a member any 
teacher, preacher or professor who voices a 
doubt as to the integrity and inspiration of the 
Scriptures as God gave them. In all our pul- 
pits and schools the teaching as to God's revela- 
tion rings clear and true. No note of doubt is 
heard. We preach faith, not doubt. 

Our country churches therefore are free 
from the baleful blight that is killing so many 
others. To the dangers in other quarters we 
referred in the last chapter. This needs 
to be repeatedly emphasized. It will not be out 
of place here to add a quotation of what we 
wrote elsewhere z 

" Under the garb of science, philosophy, rea- 
son and the larger light, unbelief now comes 
into the homes and churches in the pretended 
literature of religion, in the periodicals and 



94 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

helps of the Sunday-school and in religious and 
church journals. It teaches in the Sunday- 
school, preaches in the pulpit and speaks from 
the professor's chair. Church colleges and 
Seminaries are permeated with sugar-coated 
poison. 

u Asa result large masses of cultured people, 
who claim to be friends of Christianity and 
even members of the church no longer believe 
that God has given us a real revelation of Him- 
self, of His truth and His Will, and that He 
raised up and inspired certain men to record 
this revelation and that we have it in the old 
book the Bible. As there is no inspired revela- 
tion there is no miracle, no special providence, 
no place for prayer. The supernatural is 
eliminated as unworthy of belief in this en- 
lightened age. Everything is natural and has 
come to be what it is by natural evolution. 
Hence there is no sin, no need of a divine- 
human Redeemer, no condemnation of sin and 
no future punishment. These theories, dressed 
out in plausible form and set forth in pious, 
beautiful and loving words are deceiving the 
very elect and are threatening to disintegrate 
a large part of Reformed Protestantism. 

The great Lutheran Church in our land is not 
troubled with such rationalistic belief. She has 
met that old foe in the old state church. She 
knows the enemy, his wiles and his danger. 



LUTHERANS AND LAND 95 

She will not tolerate him within her bounds in 
this free land. And this not because she is 
blind or credulous. She has produced the most 
scholarly students in the world and the keenest 
critics and expositors of her sacred books. The 
deepest research into these questions has been 
made by the sons of the Lutheran church. She 
has sounded and sifted these troubles and has 
come out satisfied. And because of her patient, 
painstaking and prayerful research and investi- 
gation : because she has been through the test- 
ing and come out of it convinced, content and 
joyful in her faith, therefore she is no longer 
tossed to and fro and carried about with every 
wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men and cun- 
ning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to de- 
ceive." 

"The Lutheran Church has a theology of her 
own. It is distinct and peculiar to herself. It 
is set forth officially in her creeds and cate- 
chisms. She loves the doctrines there set 
forth. She has never felt a need of creed re- 
vision. The- truths of her theology can be 
preached. Wherever they are clearly and 
warmly presented they win adherents. Think- 
ing people outside of our church are gradually 
finding out that the old Church of the Eeforma- 
tion has a theology that satisfies both head and 
heart."* 

* See "Problems and Possibilities," pp. 11-13, also 23, 24, If. 



96 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

Such a church, with such a message set forth 
in simplicity and earnestness commends itself 
to country people. It gives them food for 
thought and satisfies their longing. It is what 
they need and are waiting for. 

The Lutheran Church cannot favor and does 
not want union with churches of another faith 
and another spirit. She cannot go into an 
amalgamation or federation with such alien 
churches in the country town. But she is draw- 
ing more and more from those who have 
dropped out or are dissatisfied in the loose, 
liberal, wavering or fanatical churches around. 
The Lutheran Church will live in the country 
and in the country town when the others are 
dead. The better people of the dying and dead 
churches will find a comfortable and happy 
spiritual home in the Lutheran Church. The 
day is fast coming when the Lutheran Church 
will regain from others more than she ever lost 
to them. 

Lutheran farmers all over our country are 
rapidly growing rich. This is especially true 
of the great Mississippi Valley and its tributar- 
ies. It will be true also in the Pacific Coast 
states. As we have noted, Lutherans are al- 
ways pious toward land. They know the char- 
acter of good soil and they generally find it. 
They can also make what others call poor soil 
rich. They are leaders in scientific farming. 



LUTHEKANS AND LAND 97 

Young Lutherans are crowding the agricultural 
schools all over the country, but more especially 
in the West. These are the sons and daughters 
of the erstwhile sturdy and struggling pioneer. 
The early settlers cheerfully and patiently en- 
dured the hardships and privations incident to 
the hewing out of homes in the forest, on the 
prairie or in the jungle. They and their sons 
are becoming the independent lords of the land. 
They have their sections of acres, palatial 
homes, flocks and herds and tenants and tour- 
ing cars. One of these Lutheran lords of the 
soil recently gave to each one of his eight chil- 
dren a section, i. e., six hundred and forty acres 
of the richest and best improved land. Such 
Lutherans will soon be counted by the thousand. 

Then what of the country church in their 
midst! Will worldliness, luxury and dissipation 
increase and make them forget their church? or 
will they remain loyal and consecrate their 
wealth to the church, her interests, operations 
and institutions? 

Surely the land-love and land-prosperity of 
such people, with such admirable traits and 
characters, made what they are by the dear old 
Lutheran Church, ought to safeguard and pro- 
mote the country church in their midst. 



CHAPTER ELEVEN. 

THE LUTHERAN SITUATION TODAY. 

A Bundle of Letters. 

There is no other Protestant Church in 
America so harmonious in its creed, so unani- 
mous in its belief and teaching as the Lutheran 
Church. With the exception of one large body 
which has tried to bring an alien doctrine, a 
doctrine that does not fit in, into our theology,* 
there is a remarkable unity in the official de- 
clarations and demands as to our teaching. 
There are some differences as to the serious- 
ness in which the official declarations are re- 
ceived and the consistency with which the prin- 
ciples are carried out. We are hoping and 
praying for a better day along these lines. In- 
sincerity and inconsistency as to Lutheran 
teaching and Lutheran practice have hindered 
and hurt the Lutheran Church in the country. 

Our church practically covers the North 
American continent. She is the third largest 
Protestant church and is growing in ratio of 
membership more rapidly than any other. If 

* See "Problems and Possibilities," pp. 164-168. 
98 



THE LUTHERAN SITUATION TODAY 99 

her ministry could everywhere have and repre- 
sent the right spirit and the right activity our 
great church would rapidly forge to the front. 

We are divided into many synods. It is 
wrong to call our general bodies or our synods 
denominations. They are all Lutheran. We 
may call them separate bodies or divisions of 
Lutherans, but they are not denominations. 

Divisions or synods and groups of synods or 
general bodies are caused partly by difference 
of nationality and partly by geographical 
location. True, some of them differ from 
others in spirit, in practice and in tendency. 
But with the above-named exception their is no 
difference in the officially accepted doctrine. 

All the synods have large constituencies in 
the country. The Lutheran Church no doubt 
has a larger country membership than any 
other. What is the present day status of the 
Lutheran Church in the country? 

We have tried to get an intelligent and a 
correct view of the whole situation by years of 
personal observation and by interviews with 
country pastors. We have written questionaire 
letters to well informed men in different synods 
and in different parts of the country. Every 
Lutheran who is solicitous for the future wel- 
fare of his church wants to know and needs to 
know these things. We want to enlighten and 
help all such Lutherans. 



100 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

We know that in Eastern Pennsylvania our 
church is strong in the country. She might 
have been the strongest of all in the country 
and in the smaller towns if she had always 
been as alert, earnest and aggressive as she 
should have been. We do not desire to write 
down accusations. But we do fear that too 
many ministers have lacked in earnestness of 
heart, in consecration, in devotion to their work. 
There have been all too many who have been 
content with performing the duties demanded in 
the contract in a cold, mechanical and perfunc- 
tory way. There has been too little personal 
work, too little earnest heart to heart talk of 
the inner life, of the soul's personal relation 
with God, of beseeching every one and warning 
every one night and day with tears. Too little 
true seelsorge. 

The pastoral charges have been too large in 
many places. The spiritual life cannot be 
rightly nourished with one or two sermons a 
month. Union churches have been a calamity 
in many sections. We are glad they are com- 
ing to an end. There have been and are too 
many absentee preachers. They live in the 
town and serve far away in the country. Of 
the evils of this arrangement we have already 
spoken. Conscientious Lutheran pastors ought 
to examine themselves. They ought to con- 
sider seriously and earnestly whether such an 



THE LUTHERAN SITUATION TODAY 101 

arrangement can be in harmony with the 
Lutheran idea of the office and call of the 
minister, with the Lutheran idea of real and 
faithful seelsorge. Why have so many fanati- 
cal sects, sects that are less evangelical but 
more evangelistic than the Lutherans, sprung 
up and grown strong in the Lutheran sections 
of Eastern Pennsylvania, as well as in hun- 
dreds of other places ? There must be a reason. 
It is our abiding conviction that where there is 
the right spiritual life and work on the part of 
Lutheran pastors, these defective sects can get 
no significant hold in Lutheran communities. 

In rural Eastern Pennsylvania and all over 
our land the greatest need of the Lutheran 
Church is a better equipped and a more spirit- 
ual ministry.* The Lutheran Church is not 
what it ought to be because country pastors 
are not what they ought to be. 

But we believe there is a better day coming 
in Eastern Pennsylvania also. We believe that 
all our seminaries are insisting more than for- 
merly on spiritual experience and consecration 
as the prime requisite for an effective and effi- 
cient ministry. We would fain believe that con- 
ditions are improving in the rural East. 

We have before us a hopeful letter from an 

•Read over carefully "Problems and Possibilities," pp. 
46-56, also "The Lutheran Pastor," pp. 58-68, and the whole 
of chap, vii with a careful reading of all the scripture re- 
ferences. 



102 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

East Pennsylvania minister. While he admits 
the drawbacks and dangers he believes there is 
general improvement and progress in the 
country churches. He admits that the trolley 
cars, the autos and telephones bring many to 
church, but they also keep many away. He 
deplores the abounding practice of Sunday visit- 
ing and Sunday excursions. He intimates that 
the problem is serious and needs to be studied. 
More earnest country work is needed. 

We have another letter from a prominent and 
influential minister in the Joint Synod of Ohio. 
He knows the churches in his Synod as few 
men do. Speaking in general he says that the 
country church problem is not serious in his 
synod. Many of the strongest, most progres- 
sive and liberal churches in the synod are 
rural. The people are largely prosperous. In 
many places the local church suffers because 
the ambitious young people go to the city. In 
such congregations the most faithful and earn- 
est pastor cannot prevent a decline. But when 
the departing members of such a church find 
their way into a Lutheran Church in the city 
and become active there the depleting Of the 
country church is still contributing to the 
growth of the Kingdom of God. 

He admits that there is often a local decline. 
Sometimes it is caused by a lack of such ma- 
terial as Lutherans generally draw from. 



THE LUTHEBAN SITUATION TODAY 103 

' 'The most prolific cause of decline in city as 
well as in country is an incompetent and un- 
spiritual ministry. I find country churches 
that are spiritually barren. There has been no 
growth in intellectual breadth and sympathy.' ' 
"Too often the German church will fight the 
English with a persistence worthy of a better 
cause. The young people become alienated and 
the Reformed churches fatten on Lutheran 
blood.' * "Country churches suffer also from 
too frequent pastoral changes.' ' 

"In the most numerous class of country con- 
gregations nothing has been done to supply; 
the social wants of the people which are more 
pronounced in the country than in the city. 
For this reason the young people bid fair to 
become alienated. And yet it should be easier; 
to hold the young people in the country than 
in the city." 

"The congregation should be imbued with a 
sense of responsibility for the welfare of the 
neighborhood. I have seen congregations be- 
come spiritually barren because they had lost 
the esteem of the best people in the community. 
Immoral men were in the lead in the congrega- 
tion, scandals were rife, and the moral tone 
was low. Such congregations deserve to de- 
cline. There was a previous decline of spiritu- 
ality." 

We have quoted the substance of our dear 



104 LUTHERAN CHURCH IX THE COUNTRY 

friend's letter. It has much food for thought 
and serious self-examination. 

We turn next to the sunny Southland. We 
have an informing letter from the enthusiastic 
and aggressive Secretary of the Board of Home 
Missions and Church Extension of the United 
Synod of the South. 

He says, "During my two years of service 
as Secretary of the Board I have travelled 
ahout seventy thousand miles. I have visited 
practically every section of the South where 
our church is found. Hence I think I can give 
you reliable information. 

lk My answer to your question as to whether 
the Lutheran Church in the country is declin- 
ing I answer with a positive No. Our church 
in the South is nine-tenths rural. We have 
comparatively few congregations even in towns 
of twenty-five hundred. I have found a few 
localities where Lutheran practices, such as 
catechization, liturgical worship, confession 
and absolution, preaching of pure doctrine, etc., 
have been abandoned. At such places our 
church languishes and in a few congregations 
it is threatened with extinction. 

"Otherwise there is no decline. The country 
church is taking on new life. Modern improve- 
ments, such as mail facilities, better roads, 
better schools, the telephone, the increased 
value of farm products have made rural life 



THE LUTHERAN SITUATION TODAY 105 

more attractive. It is an industrial way the 
farmer is on top. It is strictly not true that 
our rural church is going to the dogs. As 
proof look at our church schools, our home and 
foreign mission work, our church paper, all 
projected and supported by a rural constitu- 
ency. 

* ' The exceptions only prove the rule. The de- 
cline is serious in a few instances I have met 
with. A return to strictly Lutheran practice, 
catechetics in particular, will save the day even 
in the exceptional places.' ' 

We are glad indeed to publish this letter. We 
have had for a long time a warm interest and 
a great admiration for the wonderful work, the 
heroism and the optimism of our church in the 
South. The letter ought to be a tonic for every 
country pastor. 



CHAPTER TWELVE. 

the situation and letters (Continued). 

There are between two and a half and throe 
millions of Scandinavians in America. Nearly 
half a million are Danes. Reserving the larger 
sections of Scandinavians for later considera- 
tion we hen* survey the children of Denmark. 
These are not so well-known by American 
Lutherans as are the more numerous Swedes 
and Norwegians. They deserve to be better 
known. They are an interesting people with 
an intensely interesting history. Their 
achievements in the development of education 
in and for the country, as well as their bringing* 
in of a peculiar type of country life and country 
prosperity have arrested and drawn the at- 
tention of the leading students of the countr)' 
life movement and of education for the country 
life. 

The one Danish man now so prominently 
before American educators is Bishop Grundvig. 
He certainly was a remarkable man, a many- 
sided genius, a character made up of contra- 
dictory elements. A wonderful scholar, he 
warned against too much book-learning. A 
106 



SITUATION AND LETTERS (CONTINUED) 107 

pietist by experience, he impressed an idealistic 
intellectualism on his scholars. An opponent of 
the reigning rationalism, he opened its flood- 
gates by repudiating confessional Lntheranism. 
An enemy of destructive biblical criticism, he 
gave a deadly blow to implicit faith in the Bible, 
by practically subordinating it to the Apostles' 
Creed. An enthusiastic supporter of Danish 
nationalism, he repudiated the state church and 
contended for the separation of the church from 
the state. Truly a medley of mixtures. 

This remarkable man is having a great in- 
fluence in country life circles among us. He 
gave a powerful impetus to the movement for 
a more remunerative and a happier country 
life in his own land. He founded the best 
country high-school system in the world. He 
demonstrated that a true cultural education is 
fundamental to and promotes a worthy voca- 
tional training. He arrested the exodus from 
farm to city and brought in a real and satisfy- 
ing back to the land movement. 

Unfortunately he divided the Lutheran 
Church in Denmark and created the Grunvigian 
party. He thus indirectly became the cause of 
the division of the Danish Lutherans in 
America. There are two Danish synods. The 
one adheres to the teaching of Grundvig. The 
one synod is the Danish Evangelical Lutheran 
Church in America. The other is the United 



108 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in Amer- 
ica. 

The people in both of these bodies, as well as 
the large number of Danish people who are not 
gathered into any congregations, all brought 
with them from the old world a love of country 
life. They also brought with them the ability 
to make farming pay. They are among the 
most prosperous farmers of the great agricul- 
tural states of the West. Their church work in 
the country is good. What they need is a more 
earnest and persistent effort to gather in the 
unchurched that are so numerous and are 
heathenizing in this Christian land. 

We quote from a prominent pastor and edu- 
cator among them : 

i ' Our work in general has the best results in 
the country churches. One reason for the pros- 
perity of our country work is that we are or- 
ganizing it into smaller parishes. In settle- 
ments where we formerly had two pastors we 
now have ten. Our people take to the country 
life where opportunity is given.' ' 

Our hope is that with the improvement of 
their colleges and seminaries and with the ap- 
preciation of the need of English and their 
more vigorous effort to meet this need they will 
become an important factor for our Lutheran 
cause in the great West. We also hope that 
by and by their divisions will be healed and that 



SITUATION AND LETTERS (CONTINUED) 109 

they will work together for the ingathering and 
upbuilding of the spiritual life of the thousands 
of their people who have not become active 
members of their congregations. 

For a general view of the country situation 
in the aggressive and enthusiastic General 
Synod we turn to a very instructive pamphlet 
on "The Lutheran Church and the Rural 
Problem,' ' by the Rev. Paul Harold Heisey, 
of Des Moines, Iowa. 

He says: "There are some rural churches 
growing, some are standing still, some are 
dying and some are dead. This is true in face 
of the fact that probably the Lutheran Church 
is not suffering in rural decline as other de- 
nominations are." 

To the question, "Does the Lutheran Church 
share in what is known as the decline of the 
rural church V 9 Professor R. B. Peery an- 
swers : ' * Yes, decidedly. ' ' 

Dr. Yarger, then president of the General 
Synod, says: "The Lutheran Church shares 
slightly in what is known as the decline of the 
rural church. In the last twenty years our 
General Synod has lost, I would say, about 
twenty churches in that way, not all in the open 
country but in small towns of a few hundred 
inhabitants. ' ' 

Dr. S. J. McDowell answers, "She does, but 
possibly not as greatly as some sister denomi- 



110 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

nations, because our people, especially those 
of foreign birth or ancestry are a rural people 
by preference." Mr. H. B. Gerhart answers: 
"No, emphatically no!" Dr. H. H. Weber: 
"Do not think so." Dr. J. A. Clutz: "Not to 
any great extent, so far as I am familiar with 
it. According to my observation the great 
majority of our country and village churches 
are quite flourishing, have good church build- 
ings or are building better ones and are quite 
modern in their facilities and methods." 

The Swedish Augustana Synod deserves a 
serious study by all Lutherans. We have often 
felt that it would be a helpful experience for 
some of our German and near-German churches 
to come into closer personal contact with the 
Swedish and Norwegian Lutherans. Ever 
since we first came to know and appreciate 
these Scandinavian Lutherans we have felt 
drawn to them. They, more than any other 
Lutherans unite a doctrinal soundness with a 
deep spirituality. 

There are still some foolish, superficial Lu- 
therans who imagine that to be seriously con- 
cerned for confessional orthodoxy means to be 
endangered for spiritual life. There are still 
some narrow, cold, intellectual Lutherans who, 
because these good things have been abused 
by false and unsound fanatics, are afraid to 
emphasize awakening, conversion, experience, 



SITUATION AND LETTERS (CONTINUED) 111 

piety and the inner Spiritual life. They are 
afraid lest by emphasis and insistence on the 
subjective side the objective doctrine might 
suffer. Neither of these two types are good 
Lutherans. They ought to learn from the 
Scandinavians that a care for sound doctrine 
and an earnest insistence on and appreciation 
of a deep and growing spiritual experience be- 
long together. Among our Scandinavian Lu- 
therans we can see the union of the two 
exemplified and demonstrated. Not that all 
their members are all that they ought to be in 
these respects. But the two sides of true Lu- 
theranism are emphasized and urged in their 
schools, in their conventions, in their preaching 
and teaching as well as in their private seel- 
sorge much more generally than they are in 
other parts of our church. We all need to study 
them and learn from them. They can teach 
the rest of us many needed lessons. 

We want to know the situation in their 
country churches. Of the Norwegians we speak 
in another place. 

We have before us several instructive letters 
from leading Augustana Synod men. One of 
these has made country church life ' ' a specialty 
both in theory and in practice.' ' He knows 
whereof he speaks and he speaks with authority. 
He says: 

"As to the question of country church de- 



112 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

cline I will say that there has been during the 
last years and is yet a noticeable tendency 
among our country churches to decline,' or 
rather to decrease as to number in membership. 
With this decrease follows also a decline as to 
efficiency, enthusiasm, financial strength and 
support of the general work. 

" Among contributing causes are the rise in 
the price of land and the consequent removal 
to newer settlements in hope of better oppor- 
tunities. 

"A general disgust with the drudgery of the 
work in the country, dissatisfaction with social 
conditions, lack of legitimate recreation, poor 
schools and the tendency of our day to live too 
much for pleasure and an easy life. All this 
makes the city life look very attractive. Inter- 
marriages with non-Lutherans and the proselyt- 
ing work of the sects around us also hurt us." 

Another valuable letter is from a wide- 
awake and well informed leader among the 
Swedes. He also knows his synod and the con- 
ditions that prevail. He is one of the younger 
professors in their leading school and is seri- 
ously solicitous that his church may understand 
the time and measure up to her opportunity 
and responsibility. 

While admitting that there is a "tendency 
to decline" he speaks hopefully of the general 
situation. He writes : 



SITUATION AND LETTERS (CONTINUED) 113 

' ' The Swedish Lutheran Church in the coun- 
try is not declining. Even the older congre- 
gations are holding their own except in some 
lumber sections where the saw-mills are closing 
down and the population is scattering. Our 
young people are very loyal and seem to be 
satisfied to wait for "better times,' ' while the 
language transition is taking place. And 
though the English is being introduced rather 
gradually, enough of it is being used to make 
them feel that their wants are being considered, 
while the interests of the old folks are con- 
served and their very natural prejudices are 
respected. 

"Some years back there was quite a general 
desire and effort on the part of the young 
people of our country churches to move to the 
city. But they are learning very rapidly that 
the city does not offer all the advantages and 
the exodus is falling off proportionately. The 
'best young people' seem to be quite contented 
to stay in the country and in the smaller town, 
excepting of course the usual about equal pro- 
portion of discontented souls who hope to 
better themselves by a change. 

"I think also that the western towns and 
farming communities have better church leaders, 
greater and more cheerful activity, a better 
social spirit, more local patriotism, better 



114 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

physical comforts and a larger healthier spirit 
that those of the average East." 

As contributing causes to whatever decline 
may be threatening the professor mentions : 

"A spirit of worldliness a craving for sens- 
uous pastime by a generation ill at ease, lacking 
in the poise and repose of a mind at peace, 
living on the fruits of a religious experience of 
the past. 

"The language question, the solution of 
which is not quite keeping pace with the de- 
mands, nor even with the real needs. 

"A one-sided orthodoxism in various forms 
and a slightly perceptible ebbing in personal in- 
terest and spiritual influence on the part of 
spiritual leaders. The distraction of mind and 
dissipation of energy in having too many irons 
in the fire. Loss of power in making wheels 
within wheels in the machinery. Lack of 
literature that Hakes' and lack of rational (not 
rationalistic) interpretation and practical ap- 
plication of scripture truth. 

1 ' All this might be enlarged upon, but it tells 
the story. So far, however, we are keeping 
going, or are kept going, too much I fear by 
the momentum given by the living past." 

Surely the experiences of the Augustana 
Synod ought to give us all much food for seri- 
ous thought. Ought it not to move us also to 
earnest heart-searching and repentance? 



CHAPTER THIRTEEN. 

the situation and letters (Continued). 

We turn now to one of the most earnest, con- 
secrated, progressive and prosperous bodies in 
the Lutheran Church. The annual conventions 
of this body are great mass meetings. They 
require the largest public buildings in the cities 
in which they meet. At their twenty-fifth an- 
niversary in Fargo, N. D., they overcrowded 
the Billy Sunday tabernacle, vacated a short 
time before. They sit for ten days and seem 
to be sorry when all is over. Their district 
conventions are attended by hundreds even in 
the great cities. When they meet in the coun- 
try the plow stands still in the furrow and the 
reaper in the field. It is not uncommon to have 
a thousand men, women and children attend. 
The laymen all have a voice and take part 
freely in the discussions. 

The great United Norwegian Lutheran 
Church is probably the most rural of all Lu- 
theran bodies. Ninety-five per cent, of the 
members belong to and worship in country con- 
gregations. And yet they are doing wonders. 
They are putting other Lutherans and even 
115 



116 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

other denominations to shame by what they 
are doing for education, for missions and for 
mercy. The blessing of God is upon them. 
Their religion is experimental, hearty, conse- 
crated, as well as soundly Lutheran. 

We have before us a profoundly interesting 
portrayal of the country situation in that 
great body by one of its leading men, one who 
was born and brought up in it and who knows 
it from end to end. He says in substance 
among other things: "La Illinois and Iowa 
some of our rural congregations are losing in 
numbers because many of the people are selling 
their farms and moving to the richer and 
cheaper lands in the Northwest and in Canada. 
They are getting rich. The tremendous mater- 
ial prosperity of the last decade has not had 
a good effect on the spiritual life of our people. 
This is becoming a serious problem. 

"Then, many of our parishes are too large. 
Where service can be had only every third or 
fourth Sunday it is not conducive to spiritual 
growth. W 7 e note in many places a decrease in 
attendance at the Lord's Supper — a very bad 
sign. 

"Work among the young people is not as 
effective as it should be. They are not taught 
and encouraged as they should be to become 
church workers and leaders. We are often too 
conservative and overly fearful of adopting 



SITUATION AND LETTERS ( CONTINUED) 117 

new methods of church work. We need more 
intelligent and intensive work along these lines. 
There is not as much of the old Lutheran type 
of piety. Naturally the type on American soil 
cannot be just the same as on Norwegian soil. ' ' 

(The serious question is not so much as to 
whether it is of the same type, but rather as to 
whether it is of the same character, the same 
depth, the same earnestness, the same trans- 
forming power that makes its possessor live in 
daily heart communion with God, that fills the 
home life with the cheerful, happy atmosphere 
of spiritual life and joyful service, that makes 
the Word of God dwell richly in the heart and 
home, that manifests itself in all the inter- 
course and dealing with fellow man, that joy- 
fully labors for and gives to all the interests 
and all the activities of the church. 

The worldly prosperity of these good people 
is affecting, as it does everywhere, the type and 
character of their country people.) 

"The fraternal orders are slowly gaining 
members among our people. This has a 
marked effect on their spirituality. It is an 
ill omen. 

"The children are not all as thoroughly in- 
structed in religion as they were in former 
times. The commercialized amusements in the 
smaller towns are generally bad. (This is a 
serious problem with all country churches. 



118 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

The Lutheran Churches will have to reckon 
with it wisely. The question of furnishing 
something better needs to be seriously studied.) 

14 Then there is the language problem. This 
is often more perplexing in the country than in 
the city. It creates fields for our Home Mission 
Board at the very doors of our strong congre- 
gations.^ 

From this interesting survey of the situation 
in this great body of earnest Lutherans, we see 
that the country problem in general is not yet 
as acute among them as it is with many other 
Lutherans. The problem, however, will become 
more and more serious. They too need to study 
the problem, to look the future in the face and 
to prepare for it bravely and wisely. May this 
little book help them also. 

One of the great good German synods of the 
Lutheran Church is the Iowa Synod. This 
synod was projected by the sainted Doctor 
AVilhelm Loehe after he found that he could no 
longer work with the Missouri Synod. A little 
band of Loehe 's pupils were sent by him to 
organize a new German synod in harmony with 
his principles and spirit. The fathers of the 
synod were the Rev. Messrs. Grossman, Dein- 
doerfer and the Fritschel brothers. 

These men who organized the synod were 
confessionally sound and conscientious. From 
the deeply earnest and consecrated Loehe they 



SITUATION AND LETTERS (CONTINUED) 119 

had also imbibed a spirit of deep, vital piety. 
Their Lutheranism was more than a profession 
of confessional orthodoxy. It was this. It was 
ex amimo sound in doctrine. But it was also a 
deep spiritual experience. And so this German 
synod, like the Scandinavian synods, combined 
confessional zeal with a living, inner experience 
and consecration. Their faith worked by love. 

This spirit of sound pietism has character- 
ized this great synod from the beginning. God 
has blessed this synod richly. Our hope and 
prayer is that in these days of growing worldli- 
ness this synod may retain and maintain the 
spirit of the fathers. 

A minister born and bred in an Iowa Synod 
parsonage, now occupying a position of promi- 
nence and great promise, a man who knows his 
synod from end to end, has given us a most 
satisfactory inside view of the country condi- 
tions. 

He informs us that a number of the oldest 
and once the strongest country churches are 
now in a sad state of decline. He mentions 
some of these venerable churches by name and 
says: "Thus I could continue indefinitely. It 
is a fact that our country churches are declin- 
ing. Our young men are leaving their homes 
to move to the town or to go west. Our farmers 
are growing wealthy. They buy all the land 
they can. Farms are much larger now than 



120 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

they were twenty years ago. With the aid of 
improved machinery they can till much more 
soil than they could in former years. So there 
is not land enough left for the younger genera- 
tion, and the son who does not inherit the 
father's estate must leave. Where there used 
to be from two to four farms there is now but 
one." 

44 The church in the smaller town is on the 
whole more prosperous. We are losing in some 
places and gaining rapidly in others. The 
reason for the difference lies in the pastor 
every time. The pastor who uses English in 
all or part of his services as a rule builds up a 
strong congregation. He not only holds what 
is entrusted to him, but he gains new members 
without ceasing. On the other hand the pastor 
who puts language on the same basis with 
Lutheranism is feeding the sectarian churches 
in his town. Our synod is beginning to see 
these conditions and is taking the lesson to 
heart. Our young men are taking up the work 
in the language of the land in no half-hearted 
way. We now graduate classes from our 
seminary of which every member is able to 
preach in English as well as in German. 

1 i To sum up : In the Iowa synod the church in 
the country is declining. This cannot be said 
in an unqualified sense of the church in our 
smaller towns. 



SITUATION AND LETTERS ( CONTINUED) 121 

"The causes are the usual ones: The lure of 
the city; the impossibility to buy the high 
priced land ; the attraction of the cheaper land 
in the west, the south or Canada. A prolific 
cause, as we have seen, is the language question, 
especially in the small town. 

"May I illustrate from my own experience? 
Not long ago I began to preach in a little town 
up the river. Until I came to gather up the 
sheep of our own fold, a Methodist had the 
field all to himself. I preach in both languages. 
I now have three times as many people in my 
audience as the Methodist has. If 'the Word 
of God is taught in its truth and purity' and is 
brought to the people in an intelligible way 
they will come to hear it. 

"In my former charge where I labored nine 
years, using both languages and doing things 
in an American way, we have a congregation of 
ninety families with a fine church and parson- 
age. Formerly there was a little flock of 
twelve or fourteen families." 

And so it is the same old story. The Lu- 
theran Church learns new lessons slowly and 
often reluctantly. Thank God she is learning. 
May this book help her to learn more rapidly 
and more effectually. 

We take another backward glance to old 
Pennsylvania. This time we look to that part 
of the state which lies west of the Alleghenies. 



122 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

This rural section is not as purely agricul- 
tural as the other sections referred to above. 
A large part of it is known as "the soft coal 
region." The one large central city is smoky 
Pittsburgh. In former years practically all of . 
the great iron and steel furnaces, foundries, 
factories and mills were crowded along the 
banks of the three rivers of Pittsburgh. In 
those days the coal fields were nearly all in 
Allegheny County. By and by coal was dis- 
covered in Westmoreland and other counties. 
Mining towns, with their unpainted shanties 
and general untidy and forbidding aspect 
sprung up like magic where formerly there had 
been nothing but peaceful, productive and 
happy farmsteads. 

Coke ovens, mills and factories, all belching 
out their clouds of smoke and soot, followed. 
The face of the country and the character of 
the population changed rapidly. Foreigners 
from the Eoman Catholic lands of the old world 
crowded in. They brought with them their ig- 
norance, their coarseness, and their vices. 
Corporations and capitalists, instead of doing 
all they could to uplift them, too often exploited 
them and kept them down. As usual labor made 
the rich very rich and with all its toil and dingy 
home life remained poor. Capitalists will one 
day have to render a heavy account for not giv- 
ing labor its rightful share of what it produces. 



SITUATION AND LETTERS (CONTINUED) 123 

Capital will have to answer for the millions 
of children, robbed of the joys of childhood, 
forced to spend what ought to be the happy, 
laughing, singing springtime of life in sadness 
and gloom. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself. 

And so a new face was put on the rural coun- 
ties of Western Pennsylvania. Farms were 
despoiled, youth became restless. The lure of 
ready and regular cash drew many to the towns 
and to the great city. The country school and 
the country church suffered. 

One who is well acquainted with the condi- 
tion of our rural Lutheran Churches in Western 
Pennsylvania writes : ' ' During the last fifteen 
years of the nineteenth century twenty-four 
leading country churches show a net increase of 
five per cent. During the first fifteen years of 
the twentieth century these same churches show 
a decrease of twelve per cent. During the 
former period the Sunday schools of these 
churches increased thirty-two per cent., during 
the latter they increased only six and a half 
percent.' " 

"We are glad to note that the life in these 
churches is not dying. During the former 
period there was an increase in benevolent con- 
tributions including everything not used for 
local support, of thirty-two per cent. During 
the latter period a further increase that ran it 



124 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

up to forty-one per cent." Our informant tells 
us — and be knows — that "The country con- 
gregations have been the more ready to respond 
to the church for funds." 

He also writes that "The larger proportion 
of students now in college preparing for the 
ministry are from the country congregations." 
I [e rightly calls the country churches "the base 
of supplies" and believes that the whole Lu- 
theran Church needs to study her country 
church problem and to strengthen the things 
that remain that are ready to die. 

As to the remedies he agrees with our con- 
tention throughout this book that the one, great, 
crying need is more consecration in the mini- 
sters, more persistent and enthusiastic personal 
work on their part, and especially better preach- 
ing. 

"Then they, the preachers, need enthusiasm 
to win men. They must be conscious that they 
have what the men need, that they have goodly 
pearls. They need the enthusiasm of the sales- 
man and insurance agent to have these men 
take these pearls." 

The ministers need to gather men and get 
others to help them gather men into adult 
catechetical and Bible classes. Men like to sit 
together, not to be quizzed and drilled like boys, 
but where they can talk back, express doubts 
freely, ask questions and draw out answers 



SITUATION AND LETTERS (CONTINUED) 125 

from the teachers and from others. If once 
these honest, thoughtful yeomen learn that they 
can get light on the questions on which they 
speculated between the plow handles or on the 
wagon seat, or the seat of the mower or reaper, 
or as they silently went about their chores, they 
will be glad to come to adult classes and get 
light and food for further thought. The coun- 
try church needs the adult Bible and catecheti- 
cal class. 

And in the Pittsburgh synod as elsewhere, 
the country church needs to be made a factor 
in enriching the social and civic life of the com- 
munity. Everywhere the country church should 
radiate kindliness, neighborliness, community 
interest, fellowship and group enjoyment. The 
church should make the community life happier, 
purer, richer and better. She should shed over 
and through it all the Spirit of Him who came 
not to be ministered unto, but to minister. 
From out of the church there must shine into 
the hearts and homes and social gatherings the 
joy and the hope of the world to come, whereof 
the sons and daughters of God do love to speak. 



CHAPTER FOURTEEN. 

SUMMARY OF THE SITUATION. 

These various voices from diverse divisions 
of the great Lutheran Church help us to under- 
stand our own country church conditions and 
problems. 

The one outstanding hopeful fact is that the 
Lutheran situation is not nearly so alarming as 
is that of the other churches. To give but one 
example: In an Iowa district with a popula- 
tion of one hundred thousand there were about 
one hundred and thirty churches of the Re- 
formed denominations. Many Methodist 
Churches are closed. Nearly one-half of the 
Baptist Churches are dead. An even half of 
the Congregationalist have deceased. One- 
fifth of the United Brethren, three-fourths of 
the Free Methodist, and four-sevenths of the 
Adventist Chruches have ceased to exist. In 
the same district the Lutherans have estab- 
lished eleven congregations, not one of which 
has been given up. 

The Lutheran stock came originally from the 
staid and conservative Germanic and Scandin- 
avion lands. Their ancestry lived largely in 
126 



SUMMARY OF THE SITUATION 127 

the country. Their American descendants are 
used to country life. They know how to adapt 
themselves to country conditions. They are 
used to hard work. They are inured to hard- 
ship. They make successful farmers. Instead 
of exhausting they enrich the soil. Because 
they love the land they want to own it. The 
few that are renters soon become owners. But 
a small proportion retire to the town. One 
trouble is that they are insatiably land hungry. 
So greedy are they to buy ever more land that 
they stunt their own better impulses, become 
hard and unsympathetic and refuse to wife and 
children the relaxations and recreations they 
deserve. And so the industrious and frugal 
elders do not feel the craving for diversion and 
excitement that troubles the native Americans. 
The lure of the city is not so strong among our 
staid and stolid Lutherans as it is among 
others. Tenant farmers and abandoned farms 
are rare among them. The church in their 
midst does not suffer so much because of a de- 
pleting population. 

Conservatism is good, but ultra conservatism 
is bad. Many of our farmers are unreasonably 
and extremely conservative. What was good 
enough for their forefathers is good enough for 
them. They are opposed to innovations unless 
they are convinced that they will directly or in- 
directly save or make more money. On such 



128 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

grounds alone do they favor improved build- 
ings, machinery and live stock. For these rea- 
sons labor-saving and time-saving devices and 
tools are purchased. 

The poor wife is not considered a money 
maker. Her domain is non-constructive. She 
must worry along and wear herself out with the 
most primitive kitchen and house equipment. 
To give the men more time for money-making 
work she must bend her back to the breaking 
point in chopping and carrying wood and pump- 
ing and carrying in water. Though she has 
abundance of work in the house she must do the 
man's work of milking and churning, if not of 
feeding and working in the field. These things 
are unAmerican and ought not so to be, except 
in cases of temporary and dire necessity. The 
farm girls want no such drudgery in their 
womanhood. Who will blame them if they 
leave the farm for the city. The boys want no 
such a life for their future wives and they too 
go to the city. 

These hindrances to country life and to the 
country church have been noted before. They 
need to be noted because our Lutheran farmers 
are prone to be guilty. 

And the unfairness of many farmers in be- 
grudging the family the kind of clothing that 
others get and that throws so much brightness 
into the life of youth, as well as the home em- 



SUMMAKY OF THE SITUATION 129 

bellishments and attractions so much loved 
drive the youth away. 

The young people have a right to a pecuniary 
interest on the farm. They need to learn to 
earn, to use and to save their own money. The 
industrious young man has the right to his own 
horse and buggy or auto. We plead for a richer 
and brighter life for the children and youth 
on the farm, and for an opportunity to get a 
start for a home of their own on the part of 
the faithful children. These things also will 
help the country church. 

Then there is also in too many places a lack 
of interest in neighborhood sociability. No 
provision is made to foster a community spirit. 
People do not get together socially. Neither 
church nor school house are used for public 
gathering. The district has no public hall and 
the village no rest room or recreation center. 

There is no break in the dull, daily toil. It 
is a monotonous round of dread drudgery. 
The craving for sociability is not gratified. 
The call of the city, its lights and its life is 
heard. It strikes a responsive chord. The 
heart of youth answers. The lively and most 
promising of the young people flee to the city. 
The country becomes more dull than before. 
Enterprise lags. The church suffers. 

As far as the country school is concerned, 
Lutheran communities fare better than many 



130 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

others. Taking them in the mass Lutheran 
people love education. They want their chil- 
dren to have at least a good common school 
education. As a rule they pay their school tax 
more willingly than they pay their road tax. 
Their over conservatism may fail to appreciate 
road improvement, but they are ready for 
school improvement. In the districts of the 
West where the population is largely Lutheran 
the country schools are the very best. 

Lutheran farmers also favor and support 
academies and colleges. In the West they send 
a goodly proportion of their children to these 
church schools. The lack of school facilities 
and opportunities for education does not de- 
populate Lutheran communities as it does 
others. 

As a class the Lutheran ministers in the 
country will probably average above those of 
other churches. As noted above in many coun- 
try districts there are only too many uneducated 
or poorly educated ministers in the Reformed 
Churches. In some sections not one out of 
four has had a course in a theological 
seminary. Such so-called ministers preach 
thinking people out of the church. In the 
Lutheran Churches it is a rare thing to find a 
minister who has not had a full seminary 
course. Most of them were college graduates 
before they went to seminary. Our country 



SUMMARY OF THE SITUATION 131 

churches are not suffering from ignorant min- 
isters as many others are. People who go to 
the Lutheran Church get food for thought, in- 
sight into God's dealings with men, His means 
and methods of grace, His way of salvation. 
The Lutheran preacher opens the scripture to 
his people. In this important matter our coun- 
try churches are better off than many others. 

While we have all too many absentee preach- 
ers among us also, we believe that our propor- 
tion is much smaller than that of many others. 
Such preachers ought to be the rarest excep- 
tion. Country congregations need a seels orger 
in their midst. 

Many of our country pastors are too poorly 
paid. Among the Germans especially the 
salary is often shamefully small. We have 
often wondered how these ministers are able to 
feed and clothe their large families. It is 
praiseworthy in a minister to be willing to 
sacrifice for his people, his church and his Lord. 
All honor to the pioneer preachers who shared 
the hardships of the new settlers in the clear- 
ings and on the wind-swept prairies. All honor 
to the home missionaries who hunted up, visited 
and ministered to the lonely ones scattered so 
widely as sheep without a shepherd. The 
church at large has never fully appreciated the 
privations, the poverty, the hardships and the 
sacrifices of the travelling preachers who car- 



132 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

ried the word and sacraments to the lonely 
settlers. God has written them down in his 
book of remembrance. There are those who 
are doing such service today without promise 
of salary. They are carrying God's promises, 
his wine and his milk without money and with- 
out price. Many of these men deserve to be 
counted in among the noble army of martyrs. 
Their works do follow them. 

But in the regular ministry God has or- 
dained that they that preach the Gospel shall 
live of the Gospel. God has said of his min- 
isters that the laborer is worthy of his hire. 

It certainly should not be expected of a 
pastor who faithfully ministers to a parish of 
well to do farmers that he should be compelled 
to live upon a salary so meagre that he cannot 
properly clothe his family or provide them with 
the needed comforts in the home. Where the 
people are able to pay it is their bounden 
duty to give him enough to equip himself with 
the books and periodicals that he needs in order 
to keep up with the time. He and his family 
have a right to have music in the home and 
money for music lessons. He has a right to a 
salary sufficient to give all his children a good 
education. He has a right to provide against 
sickness, accident, death and old age in a good 
life insurance company. To his well to do 
farmers he ministers richly in spiritual things. 



SUMMAKY OF THE SITUATION 133 

They should gladly, liberally minister to him of 
their temporal things. 

Our Lutheran farmers are not poor. If they 
are in the beginning they do not remain poor. 
But too many of them are selfish and miserly. 
They do not like to give. They have never ex- 
perienced the joy of grateful giving. They pay 
their pastors a shamefully small salary. They 
thus cripple him in efficiency. They keep him 
from doing his best work. They hinder and 
hamper their church. The country church suf- 
fers because their pastor is so poorly paid. 

For the same reasons the church building 
and grounds are often unattractive and shabby. 
!A.n ugly building does not attract. The build- 
ing ought to be churchly, roomy, bright and 
well kept. A dilapidated * ' meeting house ' ' in 
a wilderness of weeds will never attract the 
community. God made His temple the most 
beautiful building of the land. God loves 
beauty. He is prodigal with it. He scatters it 
over the face of nature in the flowers by the 
wayside, in field and in forest. He paints it in 
the sunset sky. He decks the mighty heavens 
in diamonds. His house in the country ought 
to be beautiful. 

The road to the church ought to be the very 
best possible. There ought to be sheds for the 
horses, not for the members' horses alone, but 
also for the teams of the strangers and visitors. 



134 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

All these things help the country church. They 
can be had. Where there 's a will there 's a way. 
The pastor needs to point the way and lead the 
people to walk in it. 

The country church-yard should be a place of 
beauty and of peace. It should be kept neat, 
clean of dry grass and weeds, and a garden of 
the choicest flowers. What a disgrace to the 
church is a wilderness grave yard. It hurts 
the country church. All these externals count. 
A God who loves beauty counts them. They 
count in any community. Ugliness repels, 
beauty attracts. 



part 3ffui» 

(ttoMnnria far (Sanntrg $1 gators 



"To the Law and to the Testimony; if they 
speak not according to this Word there is no 
light in them. M — Isaiah. 

"Thus saith the Lord: Stand ye in the ways 
and see and ask for the old paths, where is the 
good way and walk therein and ye shall find 
rest for your souls." — Jeremiah. 

"That we henceforth be no more children, 
tossed to and fro and carried about with every 
wind of doctrine, by the slight of men and cun- 
ning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to de- 
ceive. " — Paul. 

"Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, 
whether they are of God, because many false 
prophets have gone out into the world. ' ' — John. 

"For the time will come when they will not 
endure sound doctrine; but after their own 
lusts they shall heap to themselves teachers, 
having itching ears; and they shall turn away 
their ears from the truth and shall be turned 
unto f ablest ' — Paid. 

"For the space of three years I ceased not to 
warn every one night and day with tears/ ' — 
Paul. 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN. 

EIGHT AND WRONG REMEDIES. 

As we have seen, the spiritual situation in 
many large areas of the open country, is cer- 
tainly serious. A heathenizing process is going 
on. In many country towns the same danger- 
ous tendencies are at work. There are serious 
problems before the American country church. 
If the critical conditions are not faced and 
rightly remedied, then woe be to our land. 

The attention of the better part of the Re- 
formed churches is being aroused. The alarm 
has been sounded. The surveys are a trumpet 
call to the Christian conscience. The literature 
on the subject is increasing with leaps and 
bounds. All sorts of remedies are proposed. 
Some good things are suggested. These we 
ought to consider. Many foolish things are 
recommended. These we must reject. We 
Lutherans also should ask: "Watchman, what 
of the night ?" 

We are grateful for the assurance that our 

situation is not nearly so serious as is that of 

others. But there are signs and omens in our 

sky also. We do well to know our dangers. 

137 



138 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

We do better when we safeguard ourselves 
against them. We do best when we make future 
dangers impossible. 

In the secular, sociological and Reformed 
church literature, one of the prime agencies 
urged for saving the country church, is the 
preaching of sermons that will show how farm- 
ing may be made more profitable. The pulpit 
is to be turned into a platform to teach agri- 
culture. The gospel of intensive and scientific 
farming is to take the place of the old time 
preaching of sin and grace, of redemption and 
salvation, of soul saving, and life cleansing. 
Instead of going to church to be made wise unto 
salvation, to be made holier and happier, men 
are to go to church to regenerate the soil and 
the live stock. Preachers are to restudy and re- 
introduce the message of the German Rational- 
ists of a century ago. They, with their worldly 
wisdom, preached the country churches of 
Germany empty. These American fools are to 
bring back their old, empty, unsatisfying mes- 
sage and preach our country churches full! 

No, no, we agree with our Joint Synod friend 
quoted above when he says: "To teach agri- 
culture and farm life from the pulpit is bosh 
and nonsense. There would be as much sense 
in preaching strategy and ballistics to a mili- 
tary congregation. ' ' The Lutheran preacher 



RIGHT AND WRONG REMEDIES 139 

must still preach the preaching that God com- 
mands him. 

This, however, does not mean that ignorance 
of country life and work is a virtue. Every 
good pastor ought to be interested in the things 
that interest his people. It is highly commend- 
able in the pastor that he inform himself in 
the things that engage his people six days in 
the week. We earnestly advise every country 
pastor and every prospective one to master at 
least the elementary principles of the science 
of agriculture. If it is possible without injur- 
ing the duties of his calling he ought to take a 
short course in an agricultural college. Not 
that he should take such knowledge into the 
pulpit, except to use it in the way of illustration 
and application. But it would make him a more 
interesting friend and companion among his 
people. It would help him to commend life in 
the country. It would help him to keep some of 
his best young people from going to the city. It 
would give him more influence in advising 
parents to send their boys and girls who expect 
to make the country their home, to agricultural 
college. 

It would make himself more contented in the 
country. If capable he might occasionally 
speak in the school house or public hall on a 
week night on subjects of interest to country 
life. It would enable him to bring good exten- 



140 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

sion lecturers into the neighborhood. It would 
enable him to encourage and take part in 
farmers ' institutes. Without interfering with 
the high and holy duties of his office he might 
thus do much to make the life of his people on 
the farm and in the home richer and happier. 
And so he would materially help to strengthen 
his country church. 

Understanding the psychology of the rural 
mind, the preacher should ever warn his people 
lovingly and patiently, against the peculiar 
dangers to which they are ever subject. This 
he should do publicly and from house to house. 
In this way he might save some from settling 
down into that stubborn indivualism, that 
stingy conservatism and that selfish unfairness 
to his family, so common among farmers. By 
saving them from themselves he might save 
them for his church and for his God. 

Many absurdly foolish things have been writ- 
ten and are being preached to preachers all 
over the country as to the duty of the minister 
to furnish recreation for the community. Many 
self-constituted counsellors advise the turning 
of the church into a playhouse, the making of 
the congregation a corporation for furnishing 
public amusement and the changing of the min- 
ister of the gospel into a clown who is to fur- 
nish fun for the whole country side. 

To all such suggestions the Lutheran minister 



RIGHT AND WRONG REMEDIES 141 

can give only an indignant and an emphatic No. 
He has too high an appreciation of his own 
holy calling and office. He has too sacred a 
conception of the mission of the church, which 
is the Bride of Christ. 

And yet the true minister does have compas- 
sion on the multitude. He does realize the all 
too common monotony and drudgery of country 
life. He does bear in mind that our good God 
has given to all normal people a social instinct, 
a desire for society, a longing for the joys of 
social fellowship and recreation. The good 
pastor knows that these human impulses are es- 
pecially strong in the young. He does want 
to make his people happier as well as better. 
He does want to check and weaken the lure of 
the city. 

What can he do without lowering the dignity 
of his office or lessening his influence as a seel- 
sorger? 

He cannot turn his church, which has been 
consecrated for the worship of God, for the 
preaching of the word and the administering 
of the sacraments, into an amusement center. 
But he can work for a commodious parish 
house or public hall. Not as pastor of his 
church but as a citizen he can encourage halls 
for the public, with well selected libraries, read- 
ing, recreation and rest rooms. He can encour- 
age and work for and get his people as citizens 



142 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

and neighbors to work for public gatherings, 
lectures, musicals, singing schools, spelling 
bees, literary and debating clubs and any other 
form of innocent and uplifting public entertain- 
ment, lie ought to be a nature-student. It 
would be a public benefit if he could and would 
give familiar public talks on birds and flowers 
and trees. The moving picture has immense 
possibilities within itself. It can be made a 
mighty instrument for entertainment and in- 
struction as well as for moral and spiritual up- 
lift. We hope the day is coming when every 
country community will have its own first class 
machine, with none but pure and elevating films. 
What a welcome weekly rift it might make in 
the otherwise monotonous life of the farm 
house. And why should not the country pastor 
encourage and help toward this and the other 
uplifting agencies? Let the church people, as 
citizens and neighbors, provide, encourage, 
manage and control the neighborhood joys and 
festivities. The right kind of social pleasures 
cannot be other than helpful to the country 
church. 



CHAPTER SIXTEEN. 

right and wrong remedies (Continued). 

Another remedy for weakness and decline in 
the country church that is loudly and fre- 
quently urged is a merging of the various 
churches in a community into one. The at- 
tractive goal that is presented is one church 
instead of many weak ones. This strong church 
would be efficient in every direction. It could 
"hire" a high-priced, eloquent, drawing 
preacher. He and his family would culti- 
vate culture and command influence. Needed 
lay-helpers, efficient social workers, Sunday 
school experts, soulful singers, and other ser- 
viceable attractions could be secured. And so 
everybody would flock to the one attractive, 
strong, central church. There would be no more 
stay-at-homes. The community would become 
prosperous harmonious and happy. Truly a 
fetching vision, a consummation devoutly to be 
wished for. 

But can it be? And would it work? Aye, 

there's the rub. Such Utopias have often been 

worked out on paper and word-painted on the 

platform. Where have they been practically 

143 



144 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

realized without a sacrifice of conviction and 
devotion to the truth, without a lowering of the 
spiritual life ? 

We can conceive of cases where village and 
country churches ought to combine. There are 
churches that claim that distinctive doctrines 
are of no importance, that the things that di- 
vide churches are unessential, that it makes no 
difference what one believes, that after all, 
doctrines are mere opinions, that one opinion 
is as good as another. 

On the ground of their own assertions such 
liberal churches are self-confessed promoters 
of causeless division. Convictions are wrong. 
Convictions they do not have. For baseless 
opinion they divide the body of Christ. On 
their own showing, all such liberal, broad, ac- 
commodating churches ought to welcome every 
opportunity to disband and merge with any 
neighbor church. If they are unwilling to do 
this they convict themselves of insincerity in 
their boasting of charity for the " opinions' ' 
that prevail in the adjoining church. Where 
there is no principle at stake, where no convic- 
tions of truth need to be given up there ought 
to be church mergings. 

In like manner the so-called churches that 
lay themselves out on some one idea and make 
a hobby of it, but differ in modes and methods 
only, have no valid ground for remaining sepa- 



RIGHT AND WRONG REMEDIES (CONTINUED ) 145 

rate from each other. Such are the immersion- 
ist sects, the holiness sects, and the wild revival 
sects. All immersionists ought to combine. So 
ought all holiness people. All extreme revival- 
ists ought to be in one organization. And yet 
we often' find two or more organizations or 
groups of each kind in a small town or country 
community. When thus divided into warring 
bands that try to annihilate each other they are 
the most wicked sectarians of all. 

Many of the Eeformed churches, on their 
own showing, ought to unite with each other. 
Where it is only a name that is contended for, 
it should be willingly dropped for a stronger, 
more economical and more efficient community 
church. 

All three of the above named possible merg- 
ers are desirable. They would help to solve 
the church problem in non-Lutheran communi- 
ties. We are always glad to learn of such com- 
binations, provided always that they do not 
weaken faith and spiritual life. 

What should be the Lutheran attitude to- 
ward this proposed solution of the country 
church problem? Divisions and schisms among 
Lutherans are also sinful. Wherever there is 
a Lutheran Church that is hostile against an- 
other Lutheran Church someone Utas sinned, 
and is sinning stilL It may be the fault of the 
people now hi one or both churches. It may 



146 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

be their ancestors that are to blame. The un- 
happy division may be an inheritance from a 
former generation. 

On general principles it is wrong to erect a 
Lutheran altar against a Lutheran altar. We 
have seen three English Lutheran Churches 
within a stone's throw of each other in the open 
country. Such a situation is a shame and a 
scandal. 

And yet there may be conditions that justify 
the planting of a new Lutheran Church where 
there is one already established. 

The language question may make it neces- 
sary. Where the old church tenaciously holds 
on to a foreign tongue, will admit no English 
services and so robs the children and youth of 
having the Gospel in the only language which 
they can understand and where the youth is 
being lost from the church there an English Lu- 
theran Church has a right to come. The saving 
of the children to the church is more important 
than the saving of a foreign tongue. Too many 
tragic facts establish this contention. 

Along this line our Norwegian friends are 
facing a great opportunity and a great respon- 
sibility. When the coming great union goes 
into effect there will be scores of towns and 
communities where two or three of their 
churches are close together. Without hesita- 
tion or dispute one should speedily become an 



RIGHT AND WRONG REMEDIES (CONTINUED) 147 

English Lutheran Church. If the Norwegians 
will not or cannot effect this happy change, 
then let them not complain if other Lutheran 
bodies plant English churches in these towns 
and so save the coming generation to the faith 
of the Reformation. 

It may also be that there is in the town or 
neighborhood a church that is Lutheran in 
name only. It may be one of that unionistic 
type whose pulpit is open to teachers who stand 
for a faith foreign to that of the Lutheran 
Church, whose communion altar is open to 
those who deny the Lutheran doctrine of the 
Lord's supper. It may be a church where dis- 
tinctively Lutheran doctrines are kept in the 
background if not perverted to please the non- 
Lutheran neighbors. Union revivals may be 
taking the place of careful catechizing. The 
whole spirit and atmosphere may be Eeformed 
instead of Lutheran. The pastor may be a 
member of a secret order and take part in the 
services and doings of a Christless lodge. 

There may be in that church and in that com- 
munity people to whom the Lutheran faith and 
worship and spirit and practice are very dear. 
To these people the Lutheran confessions and 
the worship and life that grow out of them 
mean something. They have conscientious con- 
victions on these matters. They want for them- 
selves and for their children a church which is 



148 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

Lutheran in doctrine, in practice and in life. 
They have a right to have such a church. It is 
their duty to get it. If they cannot make the 
church already there Lutheran in fact as well 
as in name, it is their sacred duty to establish 
there a church that can be for them a real 
spiritual home. 

For these reasons it may be necessary to 
have more than one Lutheran Church in a small 
town or country neighborhood, but to erect 
altar against altar for motives of synodical am- 
bition or pride or jealousy or rivalry is a dis- 
grace and a sin. He is not a good Lutheran 
who puts his synod or organization above the 
Lutheran faith. 

In the country and in the country town con- 
tiguous Lutheran Churches ought to unite 
wherever they can do so on a sound confes- 
sional basis. In many places this would solve 
a critical country church problem. A better 
understanding, a better spirit of unity, a closer 
and more happy cooperation, a federation that 
will federate, these are great Lutheran needs 
everywhere. They are especially needed in the 
country and village. 

It goes without saying that the Lutheran 
Church cannot even consider any proposed 
uniting with neighboring Eeformed churches. 
Such a movement is altogether out of the ques- 
tion. It need not be considered here. 



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. 
remedies (Continued). 

We have admitted all along that there is 
much wrong with the country church in general. 
The widespread interest, investigation and 
casting about for betterment are not without 
cause. There is cause for serious concern. 

We as Lutherans do not want to close our 
eyes to the conditions. We also want to know 
where there is wrong and what it is. We are 
not worthy of our name as Lutheran Christians 
if we do not seriously try to right what is 
wrong. 

But we are not ready to fall in with every 
proposed move for betterment. We believe 
not every spirit. We try the spirits. We 
prove all things. We know that our days are 
days of testing and sifting. We know that 
many false prophets and teachers and expedi- 
ents and experiments are abroad. We know 
that the very elect are in danger of being de- 
ceived. 

A new combination of Protestant leaders and 
churches has been organized. It is one of the 
greatest of its kind ever organized. It has 
149 



150 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

wisdom and wealth at its back. It is closely 
related to and influenced by the Beligious Edu- 
cation Association.* It is called the "Federa- 
tion of the Churches of Christ in America.' ' 
It is producing and circulating a large litera- 
ture. It is giving much attention to the country 
church. One of its books deals with religious 
conditions in Vermont. Its joint authors are 
Charles Otis Gill and Gifford Pinchot. After 
describing the deplorable condition of the coun- 
try churches, it recommends among other 
things the adoption of a social service program 
and a state-wide and country-wide organiza- 
tion among the churches for the promotion of 
the general social welfare. 

Social service is to be the great panacea for 
all the ills that afflict the church in country as 
well as city. The emphasis is on the word 
Social. ^Ye used to speak and hear of the 
saving Gospel, it is now the social Gospel. We 
used to read of religious revival, it is now social 
revival. The church of the past from the days 
of Christ, of the apostles, was concerned with 
the spiritual redemption of man; it is now his 
social redemption. Heretofore the redemption 
and regeneration of the soul was precious. 
Now it is social regeneration. Formerly the 
church had much to say of the world to come; 

♦See "Problems and Possibilities," pp. 137-147. 



REMEDIES (CONTINUED) 151 

her conversation was in Heaven. The church 
like her dear Master preached much of the 
Kingdom of God. She conceived it and set it 
forth as a Kingdom of Grace here, a kingdom 
within the hearts of God's children, a kingdom 
that is not meat and drink but righteousness 
and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. She 
taught that the Kingdom of Grace is fostered 
in the church and that it is the gateway to the 
Kingdom of Glory. 

Now according to Eauschenbusch and his 
school the Kingdom of God is an ethical social 
order. It is of this world and for this world. 
It consists in social well-geing. It is a Utopia 
where love and brotherhood shall reign and 
where social justice shall permeate all the re- 
lations of life. 

It is the church's business and mission to 
build such a social and materialistic kingdom. 
She is to create a new social order. The old 
Gospel is to be set aside. Its place is to be 
taken by a philosophy of bread and butter and 
recreation. That bread is to be eaten without 
too much sweat of the brow. The salvation 
that man needs is a betterment of his environ- 
ment. When this is done man will be as good 
as he need be. 

The new social program is recently set forth 
in a drastic manner in The Northwestern Chris- 
tian Advocate. Here it is in substance : "Be- 



152 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

sides visiting and praching the country parson 
is to interest the people of the countryside in 
clubs. He is to tell 'Squire Andrews just why 
that roan calf is to be fed on baked beans for 
a year. He is to be a divinely commissioned 
busybody. He will organize the children to 
clear the village street of weeds. He will head 
the agitation against the deadly drinking cup, 
manage the baseball team, introduce a painless 
dehorner, survey Thompson's lower eighty, and 
arrange a vacuum cleaner exhibition. He is 
the beneficent genius of the country side. If 
Mr. Thompson's wheat runs only fifty-five 
pounds to the bushel and if Mr. Robinson ships 
a carload of hogs to market just after the price 
has dropped forty cents it is because they did 
not consult the man who is trained to save their 
crops as well as their souls." 

In the new teaching sin is no longer a disease 
of the heart, a fault in human nature, a guilt 
that God must condemn; sin is social, it is a 
wrong arrangement of economic social condi- 
tions. As Prof. Patten says: "Sin is misery, 
misery is poverty and the cure of poverty is 
income.' ' The love of money then instead of 
being the root of all evil is the hope of society 
and its getting will save humanity. Oh, the lies 
that the human heart is prone to believe! 
Surely it is deceitful above all things and des- 
perately wicked. 



REMEDIES (CONTINUED) 153 

In the country the social propaganda wants 
more scientific and successful farming. It 
wants better roads, better markets, better 
prices for produce. It wants more sanitary 
and more convenient and better equipped 
homes. It wants less drudgery for women and 
children. It wants more diversion or recrea- 
tion for the lonely toilers upon the land. It 
wants better schools and more attractive church 
buildings and services. We have acknowledged 
that all of these things are in themselves good 
and desirable. We most sincerely hope and 
pray that every country community and every 
dilapidated and straggling country town might 
have an effective awakening on the desirability 
and need of all such things. 

But are they the remedy that will save 
the country church? Are our country churches 
to quit going to Christ and Paul for guid- 
ance? Are they to turn away from Augustine 
and Luther and Wichern and Harms and 
Passavant and listen to Ely and Peabody 
and Rauschenbusch and Shailer Matthews 
and Douglass and Faunce and such other 
rationalistic reformers who would cure the ills 
of the soul by satisfying the wants of the body? 

We Lutherans know a more excellent way. 
We do not begin at the wrong end. We do not 
build the roof garden before we lay the founda- 
tion. We do not expect to gather grapes of 



154 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

thorns and figs of thistles. Our first care is to 
have good trees, and only then do we look for 
good fruit. We want to make new men, and 
then we look to them to make new laws and 
bring in the new conditions. 

But the new men need instruction. They 
need to be shown what the needs are and how 
they are to be remedied. The pastor himself 
often needs to be shown. He needs to know 
that his church has looked into all these social 
problems and lias tried to work out a solution 
that solves. He needs to study Wichern and 
Fliedner and Loehe and Oberlin and Passavant 
and Ohl. He also needs to go back and study 
Luther's address to the Christian Nobility. 
Then he needs to apply the principles of the 
Inner Mission to his church in the country or 
small town. 

He must always bear in mind that he and his 
church are not there to be served by the com- 
munity but to serve the community. The 
church is the bride. Like her Bridegroom she 
% came not to be ministered unto but to minister. 
Like Him she must have compassion on the 
multitude. In all their afflictions she must feel 
afflicted. She is to do works of mercy not in 
order that by so doing she may save herself 
but she does them because she has been saved. 
Her works are not works for merit, but works 
of grateful love. Because her Lord and Re- 



REMEDIES (CONTINUED) 155 

deemer has loved her with an everlasting love 
and with loving kindness drew her to Himself 
therefore she says : What shall I render to my 
God for all His benefits to me? 

The pastor and his people by thus serving 
Christ in His needy ones become burning and 
shining lights in the midst of a crooked and 
perverse generation. By walking as children 
of light they become the light of the world. 
Others see their good works and are led to 
glorify the Father in Heaven. Such Christian 
social service is the church's credential. It is 
her powerful apologetic. 

Let the pastor of the country church then 
preach sin and grace, law and Gospel, repent- 
ance and faith. By doing this with prayerful- 
ness and all power he will bring men to true 
penitence and faith. They will thus become 
new creatures in Christ Jesus. The pastor will 
encourage the people and lead them to look 
after poor people in the community whether 
they belong to his church or not. As a matter 
of course no church member will be allowed to 
suffer for want of help. The sick will be visited 
and cared for both in and outside of the church. 
Neglected children will be hunted out and cared 
for. The out of the way will be evangelized. 
The pastor will preach in the school houses of 
the outlying districts. He will missionate in 
the neglected regions beyond. If a gypsy camp 



156 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

pitches near him he will take the gospel to these 
Godless wanderers on the face of the earth. 
If there is a lumber camp or a mining camp 
within reach the Word will be offered there. If 
a group of harvesters or railroad builders 
settle down for a time where he can get to them 
the living and life-giving gospel will be earn- 
estly offered. He will take singers and teachers 
from his church with him to assist in worship 
and instruction. And so he and his people will 
be fishers of men. So they will go about doing 
good even as the blessed Lord did before them. 
So they will be doing inner mission work in the 
country. Such social service Christ will honor. 
A church that will thus be busy doing the 
Lord's work in the Lord's way cannot decline. 
It will increase and abound yet more and more. 
The beauty of the Lord our God will be upon 
it. It will be a witness for good and for God 
that cannot be gainsaid. People will come to 
such a church and say, We will go with you be- 
cause God is with you. 



Part £tx 

xnrtaltott attb Example 



'Tis not a work of small import 

The pastor's care demands; 
But what might fill an angel's heart 

And filled a Saviour's hands. 
They watch for souls for which the Lord 

Did heavenly bliss forego: 
For souls which must forever live 

In rapture or in woe. 

— Wesley. 

So thou, Son of man, I have set thee a 
watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore 
thou shalt hear the word of my mouth and 
warn them from me. When I say unto the 
wicked, wicked man, thou shalt surely die ; if 
thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from 
his way, that wicked man shall die in his 
iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine 
hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked 
of his way to turn from it, if he do not turn 
from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but 
thou hast delivered thy soul. — Ezekiel. 

Eemember them which have the rule over 
you, who have spoken unto you the word of 
God: whose faith follow considering the end 
of their conversation Jesus Christ, the same 
yesterday and today and forever. — Hebrews. 

Let prayer be the key of the morning and 
the bolt of the evening. — Matthew Henry. 



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. 

BIGHT REMEDIES. 

There are thousands of sincere, well mean- 
ing and earnest Christians in the Reformed 
churches in every section of the country. They 
recognize and deplore the threatening change 
that has come over the church life of the coun- 
try. They fear the impending heathenizing. 
They plan and pray for a remedy. 

They have too much spiritual experience and 
earnestness to believe that the spiritual ills can 
be cured by economic, recreational or other 
secularly social improvements. They are con- 
vinced that spiritual evils demand spiritual 
remedies. In this they deserve our sincerest 
sympathy. They never have been clearly in- 
structed in God's way in His sanctuary. They 
do not know that God has His own way of sav- 
ing humanity and that His way of salvation is 
clearly marked out in His Word. Of this 
they are sadly ignorant. It has not been 
explained to them. This is their misfortune 
rather than their fault. Instead of denounc- 
ing them, we should feel sorry for them. 
"We should use every endeavor to show them 
kindly, lovingly, patiently, a more excellent 
159 



160 LUTHERAN CHUKCH IN THE COUNTRY 

way. In their zeal, which is not according to 
knowledge, these good people are ready to take 
up and fall in with anything that promises re- 
lief and betterment. They are often imposed 
upon and inveigled into the fanatical sects that 
make a great show of earnestness. These im- 
mersionist and revivalist and sanctificationist 
sects are heretics as to psychology, as to peda- 
gogy and as to theology. They burn the country 
over like a forest fire. 

The good people who have too much common 
sense left to be drawn into the nets of the 
fanatics look elsewhere for salvation from the 
threatening heathenism. They build their 
hopes on a country wide revival of evangelical 
religion. They want all the churches to forget 
and lay aside their distinctive teaching and 
practice and unite for the one great purpose 
of reviving the spiritual life of the community. 
They are ready to work, to pray and to pay 
for such a revival. They want all to join in 
securing the best possible professional evan- 
gelist. They are willing to shut their eyes to 
the inconsistent and objectionable features of 
the campaign. If only souls can be saved and 
the churches revived and strengthened then all 
will be well in the end. This is their great 
remedy for saving the country church. 

The Lutheran pastor in the country and town 
is requested and urged to unite in "getting up" 



EIGHT REMEDIES 161 

this community revival. He is assured that his 
church will share in the general benefit and 
prosperity that will follow. What is he to do ? 

If he is a true, a whole-souled, consecrated 
servant of Christ, he knows and deeply deplores 
the spiritual dearth in the community. He is 
conscious that the spiritual life in his own con- 
gregation is by no means what it ought to be. 
Like the prophet of old he cries: "Oh that 
my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain 
of tears that I might weep day and night be- 
cause of the slain of the daughter of my peo- 
ple." Or with the greatest of the Apostles he 
exclaims : "For many walk of whom I have told 
you before and now tell you even weeping that 
they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, 
whose end is destruction, whose God is their 
belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who 
mind earthly things." 

Yes, his people too need an awakening, a 
true reviving. And there are many in his 
neighborhood who ought to be members of his 
church. Might not a general awakening, such 
as is planned, reach them also and bring them 
in? Shall he join in? He wants what other 
earnest Christians want, a more widespread 
and all-embracing spiritual interest. 

But can he join hands and cooperate with his 
Eeformed neighbors? He considers seriously 
their plans, their means, their methods. Shall 



162 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

he confess his own ministry a failure, so far 
as implanting and promoting spiritual life is 
concerned, and give way to a professional 
evangelist? Shall he confess that the method 
of making disciples which he has learned from 
Christ and which he has tried to follow is now 
out of date? Must the old w T ay of making 
disciples by baptizing and teaching be given up! 
Shall he admit that the new evangelism which 
makes light of doctrine ignores the sacraments 
and appeals to feeling and to passion is better 
than Christ's way? No, no! He cannot do 
this. He cannot at the request of even good 
and earnest people sacrifice that which makes 
the Lutheran Church Lutheran. To do so 
would be too big a step towards agreeing to 
merge his church into one central, nondescript 
union church without creed or catechism or 
conviction of truth. The Lutheran must re- 
main consistently Lutheran even at the risk of 
being misunderstood, misrepresented, and los- 
ing favor and friends in the community.* 

He reconizes the ills and the dangers of the 
country church and people. But the proposed 
union revival is not his remedy. What shall 
be his remedy? Is there no balm in G-ilead? 
Is no physician there? He examines himself 
and his work. He cries mightily to God. Ho 

♦On the whole subject of Revivals see chapters xxiii- 
xxvii in "The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church." 



RIGHT REMEDIES 163 

wants his own heart revived. He wants to 
put more life and energy into his work. 

And so he resolves on his knees that he will 
do his preaching more with the demonstra- 
tion of the Spirit and with power. He will 
lift up his voice like a trumpet. He will cry 
aloud and spare not. He will show Israel his 
sin, and the house of Jacob his iniquity. "The 
spiritually minded and consecrated minister 
will put heart-searching, even heart-breaking 
power into his preaching. He will preach with 
feeling and with unction. His preaching will 
make the self-secure and self-satisfied sinner 
uneasy, dissatisfied with self, anxious about his 
personal salvation. Where there is such 
preaching there will come requests for personal 
interviews at which the truest kind of private 
confession will take place. A pastor who never 
has persons deeply concerned about their own 
personal salvation knocking at his study door 
may well question himself as to whether his 
preaching is with power and with demonstra- 
tion of the spirit. Our ministers need to study 
the great Lutheran preachers who were so 
wonderfully fruitful in bringing sinners to 
heartfelt repentance toward God and faith, real 
personal experimental faith in our Lord Jesus 
Christ.* t 

♦Read "Problems and Possibilities," pp. 51-57. 

t For a Revival experience of Dr. Passavant see, his "Life 
and Letters," pp. 135-138. 



16-4 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

The earnest pastor will also resolve to do 
more personal and evangelistic work with the 
unchurched in his neighborhood, pray with 
them, speak to them most earnestly about their 
souls, beseeching them to be reconciled with 
God, warning every one night and day with 
tears. 

He will put more life and personal applica- 
tion into all his work. He will not only baptize, 
but will explain its meaning and responsibility 
in relation to the spiritual life. He will not 
only teach and preach the true doctrine on the 
Lord's Supper but will more than heretofore 
insist on the need of heart-searching and peni- 
tent preparation for the right reception of the 
holy sacrament. He will put more life and 
personal application into his catechizing and 
emphasize more the need of heart preparation 
for confirmation. And so he will with God's 
help revive and strengthen the country church 
and make it a power for spiritual good in the 
community. 



CHAPTER NINETEEN. 

eight kemedies (Continued). 

In this last chapter we want to reimpress the 
safeguardings and the remedies that Lutheran 
ministers in the country need to take to heart. 
Will the brethren pardon plainness of speech? 
Will they suffer this word of exhortation? We 
want to strike to hit. We want to hit to hurt. 
We want to hurt to heal. It is for the hurt of 
Joseph that we need to be hurt. 

We have spoken freely and frequently of the 
urgent need of right preaching. It is written 
in one of our great confessions that " There is 
nothing that holds people to the church like 
good preaching.' ' Whoever does not lay the 
emphasis on preaching, whoever does not give 
the proper care as to whether his preaching is 
good is not true to the Lutheran confession, he 
is not orthodox. 

But a greater than Melanchthon has said that 
"It pleased God by the foolishness of preach- 
ing to save them that believe. Preach the word, 
preach the preaching that I bid thee." These 
are God 's exhortations, ' ' If thou wilt not warn 
165 



166 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

the wicked man in his wickedness he shall die, 
but his blood will I require at thine hands." 
The minister must watch for souls as he that 
must give account. 

We do not want to think that there are many 
of our preachers who are too lazy to prepare 
as they should, too lazy to do their best. All 
such will have a heavy account to give to God. 

But we do fear that there are all too many 
whose preaching is intellectually cold. It is 
historically, exegetically and doctrinally cor- 
rect, but it lacks heart-power. It does not 
bring the careless, easy-going sinner to a heart- 
felt sense of his guilt. It does not awaken the 
sleepy sinner to personal repentance. It does 
not have in it the heart comfort and encourage- 
ment that the sincere but timid, distressed in 
the faith need. The heart that is heavy, bur- 
dened, bowed down and crying for comfort and 
hope is not sent home from church lightened 
and lifted up into the peace of God. In this 
sad world there are so many heavy hearts, more 
than we realize. Their faith is weak, their fears 
are strong. Yet their heart panteth for God 
as the deer panteth after the water brooks. 
"Comfort ye, comfort ye my people saith the 
Lord. Speak ye to the heart of Jerusalem. 
Tell her that her sins are forgiven that her 
iniquities are pardoned that the Lord hatli 
given double for all her sins. " It is the blessed 



RIGHT REMEDIES (CONTINUED) 167 

privilege of the minister to smite that he may 
heal, to throw down that he may lift up, to break 
the heart that he may bind up the broken 
hearted, to comfort all that mourn in Zion, to 
give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for 
mourning, and the garment of praise for the 
spirit of heaviness. All this he does by rightly, 
tenderly, feelingly preaching law and gospel, 
telling men, even weeping as he tells them, that 
they are the enemies of the cross of Christ and 
that the end of such is destruction, and lifting 
the penitent into the peace of God. Such heart 
power is the great need of our Lutheran pulpit. 
The country church that has such preaching 
cannot decline. God always owns and blesses 
such preaching. 

Another department of ministerial duty in 
which we fear too many of our pastors are 
derelict is private seelsorge. Lutheran pastors 
in the large state-church parishes of the old 
world are not expected to look after their people 
personally and individually. Preaching from 
house to house, watching for every individual 
soul as one that must give account, warning 
everyone night and day with tears, are not em- 
phasized as every pastor's duty in the state 
churches. Many of the great theologians and 
teachers of the church have declared themselves 
against going to see people except when sent 



168 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

for. Some of the old church orders take the 
same position.* 

These traditions of the old world, so com- 
fortable to the flesh, have influenced and are 
influencing too many of our Lutheran ministers. 
Some of them seem to have the idea that it is 
beneath their dignity to run after people. They 
have not been trained to and they do not like to 
do personal pastoral work. They do not train 
their people to do personal work. They allow 
the more evangelistic but less evangelical 
churches to outdo them and to gain many people 
whom the Lutheran Church might have and 
should have had. 

This is even more true as a rule in the coun- 
try than in the city. Pastoral visiting is more 
laborious in the country than in the city. It 
consumes more time and energy. Too many 
pastors dislike it and regard it as a drudgery. 
Hence they see their people only in church. 
The cold and careless are not admonished face 
to face. The endangered are not warned, the 
lost sheep and straying lambs are not sought 
until found. Those along the highways and 
hedges are not invited and compelled to come 
in. Thousands are left in a world unfriendly 
and hostile to God, and no man cares for their 

* See "The Luther Pastor," chap, xviii. The whole section 
on private seelsorge ought to be frequently and prayerfully 
gone over. 



RIGHT REMEDIES (CONTINUED ) 169 

soul. We fear that there are hosts of them 
living in reach of Lutheran Churches to whom 
the Lutheran pastor never spoke about the 
needs and dangers of their souls. There are 
godless country homes near to our churches 
into whose door a Lutheran pastor never en- 
tered. Here is a crying country need. Here 
is a heavy pastoral responsibility. Here is a 
work needed far more than a so-called revival 
and far more effective than a spasmodic public 
excitement. Here Lutheran evangelism is 
needed. Our country churches suffer for the 
lack of it. Its absence makes many churches 
decline. 

As agencies closely connected with and auxil- 
iary to such personal visitation and work every 
country and city church also ought to have 
adult catechetical and Bible classes. These 
classes ought to be free conferences. Here the 
class members should be encouraged to bring 
and unload all their doubts and perplexities. 
Here they should ask the questions that trouble 
them. Here they should seek and find the 
needed solutions and answers. Here is an 
agency that Lutherans have not half appre- 
ciated. We have not utilized these adult classes 
as evangelistic agencies. Where we have them 
we too often preach down to them, and their 
doubts and difficulties remain unanswered. In 
such classes the people ought to ask far more 



170 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

questions than the teacher. When a teacher is 
drawing out more questions than he is asking 
he is doing his best teaching. 

There are some people who have questions 
on their mind but are too timid to ask them in 
class. For such a question box should be at 
hand. This might be a further help to extend 
help where help is most needed. Every mem- 
ber of these classes ought to be always on the 
lookout to help to bring in others. And so 
the classes ought to be the fruitage of 
the personal and pastoral work among the out- 
siders as well as among the church people. 
They could and should be a power of good to 
the country church.* 

One of the glories of our church is her cus- 
tom of catechization. No other church has so 
good a custom. As a whole no other church in 
the world does as much for the children as our 
Lutheran Church. The catechism is one of her 
crown jewels. 

"We are happy in the conviction that the great 
majority of our ministers catechize their chil- 
dren. Not all are as painstaking and as thor- 
ough as they ought to be. Too many are super- 
ficial and hasty in their work. There are still 
some who are satisfied with a few so-called 
lectures, but lecturing is not catechizing. 

A more common and a more serious fault, 

* See "Problems and Possibilities," pp. 61-64. 



RIGHT REMEDIES (CONTINUED) 171 

however, is a cold, schoolmasterly manner of 
catechising. There is a sad lack of heart, lack 
of heartiness, absence of warmth, and ab- 
sence of interest in the souls of the catechu- 
mens. Here also heart power, the power to 
draw the hearts of the catechumens into per- 
sonal and experimental relation with the dear 
Saviour is the great desideratum.* The right 
kind of catechizing for the head, for the heart, 
for the life, for old as well as for young, is a 
wonderful help for the country church. 

Another helpful agency that we mention is a 
good, live, interesting and attractive Sunday 
school. We Lutherans have the best Sunday 
school literature in the world. The Lutheran 
Sunday school is not an independent institution. 
It is a part of the congregation. It has been 
called the teaching department of the church. 
Its worship and all its literature are in har- 
mony with the church. It does not train away 
from the church, but more deeply into the 
church. 

It is graded according to the best principles 
of psychology, of pedagogy and of scripture. It 
is a school, a Bible school. Topped out with a 
Bible class, as advocated above, it can be and 

* Read over carefully pp. 30 ff., and chapters xii, xvi, and 
xvii in "The Lutheran Catechist, also chapters ix-xiil, "Way 
of Salvation." 



172 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

ought to be a powerful agency in and for the 
country church.f 

The greatest need and the one most difficult 
to satisfy is the securing of the right kind of 
teachers for the Sunday school. We want 
teachers who can teach. We cannot be satisfied 
with mere attractive entertainers. We want 
our teachers to be living Christians and devoted 
members of our own church. We want them 
to know what to teach and how to teach. 

The pastor is the head of his congregation. 
He is responsible for the teaching in his church. 
He is to be the teacher of the teachers. He is 
to teach them what to teach. He is to teach 
them how to teach. Where our graded series 
is used he is to be master of the whole series. 
It will certainly drive him into a deeper and 
wider study of the Bible. This is good for him. 
He needs to have a good teacher training class. 
This class he ought to meet regularly and train 
thoroughly.^ 

He will also do all he can to establish and en- 
courage Sunday school institutes and summer 
schools for teacher training. These will be a 
great help toward making his Sunday school 

t See "Way of Salvation," pp. 55-68; "Lutheran Pastor," 
pp. 244-246; "Problems and Possibilities," pp. 52, 53, 103-107. 

t To guide and assist in teacher training he and every 
teacher needs "The Sunday School Handbook," by J. R. E. 
Hunt. 



RIGHT REMEDIES (CONTINUED) 173 

effective. An efficient Sunday school is a 
mighty power in a country community. 

A good Luther League will help to hold to- 
gether and interest the young people. It can 
also be made a useful training school for in- 
telligence in all that pertains to the church, her 
teaching, her history, her life and her activities. 
Out of a good Luther League will come Sunday 
school and church workers as well as candidates 
for the ministry of mercy and candidates for 
the ministry of the Word. The efficient country 
church needs a good live Luther League.* 

All these agencies require a consecrated, en- 
ergetic and ever active pastor. Every church 
problem in city or country is always, in the end 
a pastoral problem. The greatest need still is 
pastors after Christ's own heart. 

*See "The Lutheran Pastor," pp. 246-248; "Problems and 
Possibilities," pp. 95, 96, 107-110. Every Lutheran minister 
needs the new, revised "Luther League Handbook." 



Part #ettnt 

Jtmpiring SxampUai 



Every noble work is at first impossible. — 
Carlyle. 

There is no well-doing, no God-like doing, 
that is not patient doing. — J. G. Holland. 

Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the 
Lord and not unto men. — Paul. 

Let all things be done decently and in order. 
—Paul. 

If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, 
who giveth liberally and upbraideth not. — 
James. 

Never fear to bring the sublimest motive to 
the smallest duty. — Phillips Brooks. 

What man has done, man can do. 

— Everybody. 

They that be wise shall shine as the bright- 
ness of the firmament ; and they that turn many 
to righteousness as the stars forever and ever. 
— Daniel. 



CHAPTER TWENTY. 

A LUTHERAN PASTOR 's WONDERFUL WORK. 

About thirty miles Southwest of the famous 
city of Strassburg, on a plateau of the Vosges 
Mountains lies the land called the Steinthal. It 
is a part of Alsatia which in the time of which 
we write belonged to France. Since the close 
of the Franco-Prussian war it is part of the 
German Empire. Here a hundred years before 
that war lived and labored one of the great 
country pastors of his time. Here in a wild 
forbidding country, among a half savage 
people a young university bred pastor began a 
pastorate that was to last for sixty years. The 
story of those sixty years is one of the true 
romances of church history. It brings before 
us a wonderful career of a wonderful man of 
God. His life and work should receive the care- 
ful study of every country pastor. It would 
prove an inspiration to many a disheartened 
one. 

The people of the bare mountain parish called 
themselves "Christians of the Augsburg Con- 
fession." But there was little living Christian- 
ity among them. They lived largely by hunting 
and hog-raising. They were ignorant, rough 
177 



178 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

and given to drink. They lived in poverty and in 
filth. Surely an unpromising field. Few of our 
seminary graduates would be willing to start in 
such a place. The parish had been served for 
several generations by rationalistic and worldly 
pastors. Under them the economic, the intel- 
lectual, the moral and spiritual life of the people 
had sunk lower and ever lower. A blessed ex- 
ception was the young Eev. Johann Stuber. 
He was the immediate predecessor of Oberlin. 
While he lived Oberlin looked to him as a 
spiritual advisor. He had laid the foundations 
on which Oberlin so successfully builded. 

The young Oberlin was hoping to become a 
chaplain in the French army. With this in view 
he had studied science and system and had ac- 
customed himself to a rigid regime. While 
waiting for an appointment he was tutor in the 
family of a wealthy physician. Here he studied 
the principles of hygiene, sanitation and ma- 
teria medica. He was unconsciously preparing 
himself for his many-sided work in the Stein- 
thal. 

Oberlin was a deeply spiritual man. While 
he was considering a call to the Steinthal he 
wrote out a most remarkable personal confes- 
sion of his faith and experience. It reads like 
the journal of young Passavant.* This con- 

*See "Life and Letters of Passavant," pp. 63-77. 



A LUTHERAN PASTOR 's WONDERFUL WORK 179 

fession he renewed ten years later. The 
confession breathes a spirit of deep mysticism 
and pietism. It lays bare the inner life of the 
man. It marks him as a man of deep devotion 
to his Lord. His correspondence with Pastor 
Stuber brings out the same personal traits. 
Stuber did him much good. He saw the danger 
of mixing in too many outside projects. We 
are tempted to give large extracts from 
Stuber 's letters. We give space to only a few.* 
"God will bless your faithfulness which 
shines out so lovingly in your letters. Only let 
us cling in faith to Him. You have, my young 
brother, far more than I have; an attractive- 
ness before men. If only you keep on fearing 
God above all others and do not allow yourself 
to be drawn into too many projects, you can 
do much more effective work than I did. I 
want to impress upon you that one can get 
away from true Christianity even through good 
works. You have been converted. Now if you 
do not watch, if you do not keep close to God, 
if you depend upon your past conversion, if 
you cumber yourself with too many labors, too 
many anxieties, you may in neglecting a daily 
conversion, a daily intercourse with your God, 

* Our principal authority for the facts of this chapter is 
the German "Zuege aus dem Leben von Johann Friedrich 
Oberlin," by Dr. G. H. Shubert. Pilger Book Store, Read- 
ing, Pa. 



180 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

a daily refreshing of the inner man, become so 
diverted, so cold, that even devotional exercises 
will separate you from God." "The zealous 
young man is so easily tempted to say, *I am 
so busy helping others' that he neglects the 
fostering of his own inner life. Therefore have 
I thought it well to warn you. The heart is 
deceitful and heavy as lead. It sinks down if 
it is not constantly drawn up. I find it deeply 
necessary that for the refreshing of our own 
hearts and for the constant rekindling of the 
spirit of Christianity within us we keep impres- 
sing upon ourselves the vital necessity of dili- 
gently using the Word and prayer. Out of 
the writings of the Apostles I must strengthen 
my spiritual life . . . The most important 
thing for you is that you care for the souls of 
your Steinthal people, make them good Chris- 
tians and other virtues will be easily learned. ,, 
That Oberlin took to heart these fatherly 
councils is manifest all through his active min- 
istry. It would be an utterly false conception 
of the man to think of him as a minister who 
was mainly concerned for the temporal welfare 
of his people. He never put the temporal first. 
He never even dreamed of letting temporal 
well-being substitute Spiritual welfare. He 
always put the first things first. ' ' Seek ye first 
the kingdom of God" was a life principle with 
him. 



A LUTHERAN PASTOR 's WONDERFUL WORK 181 

That the first concern of his yearning and 
striving and working was that he might win 
the souls of young and old for Christ is mani- 
fest from his habits of prayer. Not only in 
the morning and in the evening but often 
through the day would he get on his knees and 
make intercession for the souls of his people. 
In his later years he had the habit of having 
his church register open before him when he 
knelt in private prayer. Then he would bring 
this one and the other one of his flock before 
his God by name and make special intercession 
for those thus named. Among his papers were 
found many pages of pious wishes for his flock. 
Members of his family testified that he would 
spend whole nights in pleading for his people 
and would cry out again and again: "Oh my 
congregation, My poor congregation ! ' ' 

His preaching was mainly a clear exposition 
with earnest personal application and striking 
illustration from the experience of eminent 
Christians and from the daily life and work of 
his own country people. 

His sermons were generally written out in 
full and memorized. When too much pressed 
for time to do this he would write out a full 
outline and preach freely from this. 

In his catechetical instruction on Sunday 
afternoon he would speak like a child to chil- 
dren. His catchetical talks were full of strik- 



182 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

ing and fascinating illustrations. His chief 
aim was to reach the heart and conscience and 
through them to move the will. 

For a time he tried to have a conventicle for 
especially enlightened souls. After about a 
year he found that it created a tendency to 
spiritual pride and gave offense to those with- 
out the spiritual circle. When this became 
evident he openly confessed that the plan had 
been a mistake, dissolved the circle and dis- 
continued its meetings. 

In its place he started a weekly Bible hour 
to which he invited all who wished to come. 
Here he expounded and applied larger portions 
of scripture. This he did in a most familiar, 
frank and conversational way. At intervals 
he would pause, take a pinch of snuff and pass 
the snuff box through the audience. When he 
thought some of them were weary he would ask, 
" Children, are you tired? If you are we will 
stop here." Sometimes they would admit that 
it was enough for this time. More often they 
would request that he keep on a little longer. 

He wanted a Bible in every house and wanted 
it used there. He persuaded the officers of the 
British and Foreign Bible Society to open a 
branch house in Waldbach. From here the 
French and German Bibles were distributed 
throughout his large parish. 

Oberlin was a frequent and faithful visitor 



A LUTHERAN PASTOR 's WONDERFUL WORK 183 

in the houses of his people. His were true 
pastoral visits. He would inquire into the use 
of God's Word, into the training of the children, 
and into the spiritual interests in general. He 
would kindly give instructions and admonitions 
on all these things. Often he would kneel and 
pray in the humble homes of his peasant people. 

From the beginnng of his work among them 
Oberlin took a deep interest in the education 
of his people. He saw the sad lack of good 
schools. His predecessor Shubert had made 
a heroic beginning. He had built the first re- 
spectable school building. Oberlin collected 
money from friends in Strassburg and built 
another in Waldbach. By and by he had a 
school house in every little village of the Stein- 
thal. He himself was the soul of the system. 
He introduced competitive examinations with 
prizes for those who excelled. With the aid 
of his friends, added to his own liberal gifts, 
he established a circulating library in which 
every village had a right. 

He had noticed that the children under school 
age were in need of attention. While the 
parents were at work in the fields and the older 
ones were in school the little ones were left 
without care or protection. Sometimes they 
were locked in the house. Most of the time 
they were left to roam and to take care of them- 
selves. Oberlin saw that they were often in 



184 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

physical and moral danger. This gave him 
serious concern. 

One day as he looked out of his window he 
saw his fifteen year old maid, Louisa Schepler, 
with a group of these neglected children around 
her. All seemed to be deeply interested. 
Louisa was teaching them games, telling them 
stories, and drilling them in verses of simple 
song. Oberlin watched this impromptu little 
children's school with joy. It was a kinder- 
garten at work before Froebel was born. It 
was a Christian Kindergarten. The stories 
were Bible stories and the songs were hymns. 
Oberlin made up his mind to have just such a 
school in each village. Louisa Schepler showed 
the way. Eight other bright girls were soon 
secured. These "cadetted" under Louisa. 
She became the teacher trainer and soon there 
were eight schools in operation. This was the 
origin of the Christian Kindergarten.* 

In 1794 the National Convention of the 
French Eepublic recognized Oberlin 's Kinder- 
garten. In acknowledging their recognition 
Oberlin writes : ' l It is now about twenty-seven 
years since I placed eight teachers in as many 
villages of my parish. They taught the little 
ones by means of pictures, stories, games, plays 
and songs. They also taught them to knit 

* See the neat little booklet of the Rev. Dr. T. E. Schmauk 
called "The Christian Kindergarten." 



A LUTHERAN PASTOR >S WONDERFUL WORK 185 

which up to that time was unknown in the 
region.' ' In these schools the children learned 
of the dear Saviour and the other great and 
good men and women of the Bible. The inci- 
dents related in this chapter bring out the deep 
spiritual character of Oberlin. 

These essential characteristics of the man 
and the pastor are generally passed over in the 
books on the country church that hold him up 
as the model country parson. They dwell on 
the economic and industrial improvements that 
he introduced as if he had given his whole care 
and time to these. 

We want to impress it clearly and deeply 
that Oberlin was first of all a man of God. He 
was a devout and consecrated spiritual guide. 
The secular interests that he taught his people 
were side-lines. In the midst of his week-day 
secular work, he was always a seelsorger. We 
want our country pastors to be helpful to their 
people in securing a richer home and farm life. 
But we want them to carry Oberlin 's spirit into 
it all. 



CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. 

oberun's industrial and social leadership. 

Oberlin knew that people who lived in pov- 
erty, dirt, and social degradation were not good 
subjects for the Gospel to work on. He also 
knew that ignorance is a serious hindrance to 
evangelization. He knew that ignorance, 
poverty and filth are breeders of vice and that 
economic degradation provokes moral degrada- 
tion. He lived long before there was an or- 
ganized Inner Mission or a social service pro- 
paganda. But he knew what is true in the 
fundamental principles of both. He knew that 
in Steinthal he could not evangelize without 
bettering the community life on its secular and 
social side. 

He also knew that such betterment always 
follows right evangelization. He knew that 
when poor and degraded people become Chris- 
tians they rise out of their degradation and 
poverty. He knew that social well-being al- 
ways follow spiritual renewal. But he also 
knew that those who have been living on a low 
plane socially needed to be shown how and to be 
helped toward a higher family and society life. 
186 



OBERLIN *S INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL LEADERSHIP 187 

And still further, Oberlin knew that it is the 
bounden duty of every child of God to do what 
in him lies to help make the life of his neighbors 
more comfortable and happy. He expected all 
his people to be willing social service workers 
always, not that they might thereby be saved, 
but because they themselves had been saved. 

He never for a moment cherished the shal- 
low idea that to give a bath would make a clean 
heart; that to feed the hungry would satisfy 
the soul ; that to clothe their bodies would make 
them fit to stand before God, and to give them 
better housing would mean a home and shelter 
for the spirit. Oberlin would scout the notion 
that to have eugenics prevail would do away 
with the need of a new birth. He would never 
even have listened to the airy hopes and 
schemes of a Christless and Holy Spiritless 
social service. 

But he did have a deep true Christ-like com- 
passion for his poor degraded people. He did 
want them to have more worldly comfort, more 
leisure to learn, a brighter and happier life. 

And so, without neglecting the care of their 
souls, he set out to educate the community in 
the ways of a better social life. 

The people had degenerated into the most 
slip-shod type of farmers. Their soil had be- 
come impoverished. They were one-crop 
farmers. They knew nothing of rotation or 



188 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

fertilizing. They cultivated potatoes. But the 
quantity and quality produced per acre had 
become lower and lower. The more energetic 
hunted game and fished. Those that were too 
listless for this and too lazy eked out a bare 
existence. Many were hungry all the time. A 
widow once earned a penny. She expressed 
her joy by saying that now she would be able 
to buy salt to eat with her potatoes. 

The land was well adapted to clover, to grain, 
to fruit, but none of these was raised. 

Oberlin preached improved farming first by 
example. He planted the fields of his glebe in 
berries, small fruits and orchards. These he 
cultivated, pruned, grafted, budded and fer- 
tilized. Spraying was not yet needed. In a 
few years he had a good variety of the finest 
fruits. His people wondered and admired. He 
showed them and helped them to do likewise. 
He imported potatoes for seed and taught the 
people how to cut them before planting and 
how to fertilize and cultivate. In a few years 
the better farmers had loads to take to Strass- 
burg. He imported clover, flax, grain and 
vegetable seed. He showed his people how to 
raise them. He likewise imported good breeds 
of cattle and taught his people the principles 
of breeding and feeding. He taught them the 
value and use of manure. He taught them how 
to drain the swampy and useless lowlands and 



OBBRLIN *S INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL LEADERSHIP 189 

so make them the most productive parts of the 
land. For all this he secured the interest and 
help of the agricultural society of Strassburg. 

He encouraged sheep culture and introduced 
the spinning of wool as well as of flax. He en- 
couraged capitalists to come and erect cotton, 
linen and woolen mills. 

As produce increased the need of roads to 
get it to market became pressing. Oberlin ad- 
vised the building of good roads. The people 
did not know how. He surveyed the routes and 
then with his own shovel showed the group how 
to proceed. For days he thus labored with his 
own hands. By and by the whole section 
became known for its good roads and good 
farms. Oberlin was careful to have the best 
road to the church. The swampy places were 
piked with the abundance of stone which gave 
the valley its name. The good roads and better 
teams brought crowds to church. He taught 
and encouraged his people to build roomy stone 
houses with walled cellars for keeping their 
potatoes, fruits and other vegetables. 

He saw the need of mechanics. He believed 
in raising a home supply. He sought out the 
brightest and fittest young men. He gave 
liberally of his own meagre means and collected 
from his friends in Strassburg the needed 
funds to send the young men to the city to 
learn the various handicrafts needed in the 



190 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

country. He also had a young man educated 
to be the parish physician. 

His own salary varied from two to three 
hundred dollars a year. With his own good 
management he got a goodly income from his 
glebe. He also had a private boarding school 
in one of the church's buildings, to which the 
rich people of Strassburg were glad to intrust 
their boys. In these ways he managed to get 
the money which he contributed so liberally for 
the various enterprises for the public good. 
During and after the terrible days of the French 
Eevolution the people of his parish were again 
impoverished. Oberlin announced publicly that 
there should be no compulsion in making the 
people pay their church dues. He wanted all 
this to be voluntary. Those who had little to 
give and those who had nothing to give were as 
welcome to all the church benefits as were the 
rich. He never believed in or practiced the 
taking of fees. As he said himself: " Among 
us, people who come into the world are baptized, 
confirmed, married and buried without cost so 
far as the pastor is concerned. ,, 

He had neither time for nor patience with 
laziness. When beggars came to the parsonage 
he would ask them "Why don't you work!" 
The answer usually was "We can't find work." 
He would say, " I '11 give you work. ' ' He would 
put them to work gathering stones out of a 



OBERLIN *S INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL LEADERSHIP 191 

field or breaking stone in a quarry. He in- 
structed all his people to send all beggars to 
him. Ere long not one was found in the parish. 

Oberlin did not teach agriculture or road 
building or handicraft from his pulpit. That 
was the place for the Gospel alone. During 
every slack season he had a Thursday after- 
noon meeting at which he instructed his people 
in the fundamental ideas that underly these 
pursuits as well as in domestic science and 
nature study. 

At these and other meetings he would often 
ask such questions as the following which were 
found among his papers after death: 

"Do you and your whole family come regu- 
larly to church? Do you excuse yourselves be- 
cause you need the time to gather berries or 
nuts ? Do you do some work of mercy on every 
Lord's day! Do you help those neighbors who 
cannot go to church because they lack proper 
clothes to get what they need! Is your private 
and family life such as the church wants it to 
be! Does the love of Christ drive you to keep 
the peace with your neighbors and to make 
peace where there is strife ! Do you keep your 
xl cattle from troubling your neighbors ? Do you 
keep out of debt! Do you get fine clothes when 
you can't pay for them or owe other debts! Do 
you conscientuously do your part to keep the 
roads in good repair! Have you planted at 



192 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

least twice as many trees along the highways 
as there are members in your household? Do 
you attend the town meetings regularly? Do 
you train your children for God and send them 
to school regularly? Are you helpful to keep 
up the forest! Do you keep an unnecessary 
dog? Do you keep the manure from wasting V 
Here certainly is practical theology for the 
country. 

Oberlin did all in his power to keep his people 
from going to law. He wanted every serious 
difficulty between neighbors fixed up by friendly 
arbitration. He organized a home-finding sys- 
tem in his parish. Orphans and neglected chil- 
dren, he said, are to be adopted by childless 
couples. He insisted that it was a duty and 
should be a privilege for the childless to take 
and rear homeless and helpless little ones. For 
every good word and work he urged coopera- 
tion. If a poor man's house or barn burned, if 
his horse or cow died, or if any other serious 
loss came the neighbors were expected to raise 
a public purse for the reimbursement of the 
sufferer. If the man of the house fell sick in 
seeding or harvest time the neighbors were to 
take turns in doing the needed work. A beau- 
tiful community life was that in Oberlin 's 
parish. 

Not every country pastor can do all that 
Oberlin did. It would be neither necessary nor 



OBERLIN 'S INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL LEADERSHIP 193 

advisable that all should try to copy Oberlin. 
Much, however, can be learned from him that 
will help to solve the country church problem. 
Let every country pastor carefully study that 
wonderful man and his wonderful work. 

Then let him adopt and adapt whatever he 
can use in his changed situation. For this he 
will find many wise counsels and many good 
hints in Oberlin. Prove all things. Hold fast 
that which is good. 



CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. 

OTHER INSPIRING EXAMPLES. 

In closing our study of the Lutheran church 
in the country we call up a number of remark- 
able Lutheran pastors who worked wonders in 
country parishes. Doubtless a long roll of such 
country worthies could be made out. Numbers 
of them whose names are not writ large in the 
annals of the church on earth have their names 
written in Heaven. Long after they rest from 
their labors their works keep on following them 
and the church keeps on reaping the fruits of 
their sowing. For the encouragement of the 
quiet country toiler we name a few whom God 
will count when he comes to make up his jewels- 
Early in the nineteenth century a university 
bred young pastor took charge of a debt ridden 
and discouraged church in the little unknown 
and unnoted town of Kaisersworth. By work- 
ing faithfully in and for his congregation, 
traveling widely to raise funds to pay the 
church debt, visiting and ministering to the 
souls of the prisoners in a neighboring town he 
caught a vision of what was needed and what 
might be done in his own out of the way corner. 
194 



OTHER INSPIRING EXAMPLES 195 

Theodore Fliedner became the restorer of the 
New Testament deaconess work, built the first 
deaconess motherhouse, brought the first dea- 
conesses to America, and laid the foundation 
for the great and blessed work of the Inner 
Mission which is one of the crowning glories 
of the Lutheran Church. A modest but deeply 
consecrated pastor started the whole movement 
in an obscure country parish. 

In another part of Germany another man a 
few years younger than Fliedner after finishing 
his university and theological studies was tutor- 
ing and vicaring while waiting for a call. After 
waiting for a number of years a call came from 
an out of the way, unattractive country village. 
It made such an unfavorable impression on the 
gifted and earnest young preacher that he said 
he ' 'would not like to be buried in such a place. ' ' 
But he was conscientious as to his vocation. 
After fighting down his own inclinations he had 
to acknowledge the call to Neuendettelsau as 
God's call. He made that congregation one of 
the crown jewels of the Lutheran Church. He 
made that erstwhile unsavory town one of the 
holy places of Zion. It became a colony of 
mercy and from it went out streams to bless 
the American Indians and to make and to mould 
the Iowa Synod whose Missionary spirit has 
gathered, organized, and made spiritually 
strong hundreds of congregations in the conn- 



196 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

try settlements all over the West. Wilhelm 
Loehe was a country parson. His life and 
work ought to be an inspiration to toilers in 
country churches when they are inclined to 
lament their "narrow sphere." 

Born in the same year as Loehe, the son of 
a minister, graduate of a university, Ludwig 
Harms had to candidate for a number of years 
before he received a call from the farmer vil- 
lage of Hermannsburg in the Lueneburg heath. 
The "Plattdeutsch" farmers were a sturdy 
folk who attended church as a matter of course 
but were scarcely aware of the great mission 
and work of the church at large. The young 
pastor by his earnest heart-searching and con- 
victing preaching brought about a religious 
awakening, a true Lutheran revival in the con- 
gregation. Then after his people had first 
given themselves to the Lord, Harms preached 
missionary privilege and missionary responsi- 
bility. 

The result was that that congregation of 
farmers became the Hermannsburg Missionary 
Society, established a seminary for training 
missionaries, built a mission ship to carry the 
missionaries to Africa and put a new face on 
large sections of darkest South Africa and 
other heathen lands. See what a country 
church with the right kind of pastor can do. 
Study Ludwig Harms. Go and do likewise. 



OTHER INSPIRING EXAMPLES 197 

Coming to the American Lutheran Church 
we can make brief mention of but a few Lu- 
theran country church pastors who made them- 
selves and their churches important factors in 
our church in its works and development. 

In the Virginia valley we find the remarkable 
family of Henkels, settled at New Market and 
making that village a landmark in American 
Lutheranism. Paul Henkel was pastor of a 
large country parish with the village church of 
New Market as its center. That hard working- 
pastor with so large a parish found time to 
search out the scattered Lutherans in the re- 
gions beyond. He gathered many congrega- 
tions and was the prime mover in organizing 
three synods. He compiled and edited the 
first English Lutheran hymn book for our 
church in the South. He wrote and published 
the first English Luther's Small Catechism. 
Country pastors can do much for the church 
at large. 

His son Ambrose became his successor in the 
parish. While pastor of the widespread parish 
he, with the assistance of other members of 
the Henkel family, translated the whole Book 
of Concord into English and supervised its 
printing on the primitive press owned by the 
family. What literary work our more leisurely 
country pastors might do without neglecting 
their parish duties. Not fewer but shorter 



198 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

pastoral calls, calls for spiritual counsel and 
uplift are needed. Oh the precious time wasted 
by long visits and big dinners in the country.* 

In 1842 the Eev. David F. Bittle, five years 
after he left the seminary, settled down to a 
country pastorate in Augusta County, Virginia. 
He noticed the lack of education and the ab- 
sence of Lutheran schools. He started a pri- 
vate school and erected two log buildings which 
grew into Eoanoke College. 

In a country parish at Middletown, Mary- 
land, Ezra Kellar was born and reared. His 
pastor encouraged him to get an education and 
instructed him privately to prepare him for 
college. When ready the young man walked to 
Gettysburg and arrived with fifty cents in his 
pocket. He worked his way through college 
and seminary, became a travelling Missionary 
in the Middle West, settled down in a country 
parish at Taneytown, Maryland. He could not 
forget the great need of an English Lutheran 
college in Ohio; worked out a plan, went back 
and founded Wittenberg College, of which he 
became the first President. 

In 1848 a young German pastor whom stu- 
dent W. A. Passavant had found working in a 
tailor shop in Western Pennsylvania, and whom 
Passavant had encouraged and helped to pre- 

* Study chapters xix, xx, and xxi, in "The Lutheran 
Pastor." 



OTHER INSPIRING EXAMPLES 199 

pare for the ministry, was doing editorial work 
in Allentown. The Eev. S. K. Brobst felt the 
need of a school for Lutheran youth. He per- 
suaded a country pastor to come to Allentown 
and assisted him to start the school which after- 
wards became Muhlenberg College. 

A pious German layman was found in a coun- 
try congregation at Petroleum Center, Pa., by 
Dr. Passavant. Oil was discovered on his land. 
He agreed to set aside one-tenth of the income 
from oil for the Lord's cause. In the spring of 
1865 Louis Thiel, placed five thousand five hun- 
dred and five dollars in the hands of Dr. Passa- 
vant. With this nest-egg the Doctor founded 
Thiel Hall which became Thiel College.* Had 
there been no Lutheran congregation at Petrol- 
eum Center, as far as man can see, Louis Thiel 
would not have become the founder of Thiel 
College. A country church started Thiel. 

For forty years the Eev. Mr. Bernt Muus 
was pastor of a country charge in Goodhue 
County, Minn. He was deeply interested in 
the welfare of his thrifty Norwegian people. 
He felt the need of a good Lutheran college. 
He agitated this among the other Norwegian 
Lutheran ministers in southern Minnesota. A 
few of these country pastors, under the leader- 

* See "Life and Letters of Passavant," p. 501 ff. Nearly- 
all the institutions of learning started by Dr. Passavant 
originated in country congregations. 



200 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

ship of Pastor Muus organized themselves into 
a close corporation, secured a charter, raised 
the needed money and started St. Olaf College, 
now one of the strongest, most advanced and 
most aggressive colleges in the West. Pastor 
Muus might have said, "I have enough to do to 
look after my large and widely scattered 
parish. ' ' But he had a vision. He was not dis- 
obedient to it. To him that wonderful United 
Norwegian Church owes much. St. Olaf is 
making the United Church a mighty force for 
Lutheranism in the West. 

In the country town of Winfield, Kan., Mr. 
J. P. Baden was an earnest member of the 
German Church of the Missouri Synod. He 
saw the need of an English college. He founded 
St. John's English Lutheran College of Win- 
field. The country church made Mr. Baden. 
Mr. Baden made possible the college. 

A group of Norwegian country pastors in 
the famous valley of the Bed River of the 
North felt the need of a Lutheran college for 
the great crop of young Scandinavians. To- 
gether they planned and prayed. Out of all 
this came Concordia College, Moorhead, Minn. 
It is doing a wonderful work in saving a multi- 
tude of young Lutherans to their church and 
making them efficient to serve. 

In 1861 the young Swedish pastor E. Norel- 
ius, whom Dr. Passavant had helped to a 



OTHER INSPIRING EXAMPLES 201 

college education, was serving two churches in 
the towns of Eed Wing and Vasa, Minn. In 
addition to his regular charge he was looking 
after the scattered Swedes in the many sparse 
settlements of the Upper Mississippi Valley. 
He cheerfully shared the privations and 
poverty of his people. With it all he started 
a private school. This school he nursed up and 
rallied friends around it until it became Gus- 
tavus Adolphus College. While fostering his 
school and doing the work of an evangelist 
among his pioneer people he also founded the 
orphans' home at Vasa, Minn. What wonders 
one man can do in the country if he has the right 
faith in God and faith in God's people. Such 
faith and consecration God always honors. 
Such hope maketh not ashamed. 

The Eev. Carl Swensson was pastor in the 
little town of Lindsborg, Kan. The country 
around him was full of thrifty, progressive 
Swedish farmers. Swensson felt that they 
ought to have a college in their midst. He was 
counselled and encouraged by Dr. Passavant. 
He founded Bethany College. He became the 
first president and held the office up to his sud- 
den and widely lamented death. He impressed 
his own enthusiastic and optimistic faith on the 
school. It has been a wonder and a joy to the 
whole Lutheran Church. The child of a country 
church whose pastor had a vision. It called 



202 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

him to expect great things from God and to 
undertake great things for God. 

While North Central Wisconsin was still 
mostly forest, while the Indians had their 
cabins and their tepees in the sheltered places 
and by the rivers and lakes an ox-team brought 
a family and its belongings into that region. 
There were occasional clearings in the woods 
with log cabins and pioneer Norwegian settlers. 
The ox-team was driven by the Bev. Mr. 
Homme. He settled on the site of Wittenberg. 
He gathered other settlers around him. He 
started and gave its name to the town. He 
hunted up the scattered settlers. He preached 
and catechised and ministered to the souls of all. 
Ere long he gathered several congregations and 
built log churches. He started a Lutheran mis- 
sion among the Indians. The heart of it was a 
Lutheran school. He founded an orphans' 
home and later an old people's home which are 
today prosperous and blessed Bethesdas of the 
United Norwegian Church. He started a Lu- 
theran Academy, which is today a Lutheran 
Indian school. There is also a Lutheran Indian 
Church there today. 

Behold what one consecrated country pastor, 
with no original capital but faith in God and 
faith in God's people, can do ! 

Not many years ago the Bev. P. C. Wike, 
fresh from the Chicago Seminary, was pastor 



OTHER INSPIRING EXAMPLES 203 

of the Colburn, Indiana, country charge. A 
disciple of the above mentioned Henkels, he be- 
lieved in the Lutheran academy. He made up 
his mind that with the help of God there should 
be an academy in Colburn. And as he believed 
so it came to pass. Colburn academy was es- 
tablished. It grew into Weidner Institute in 
Mulberry, Indiana. It has been a great bless- 
ing to scores of country boys and girls in its 
few years of existence. 

We cannot begin to mention all the country 
parishes in which consecrated pastors have done 
great things for the Kingdom of God. God 
knows them. They are written down in His 
Book. Some day the book will be opened. 

We want to give the last word to Dr. Passa- 
vant. We want him to make the last impres- 
sion. He was himself the product of a country 
congregation. While a college and seminary 
student he organized country Sunday schools 
and congregations and canvassed in the Alle- 
gheny Mountains for the American Bible So- 
ciety. His first charge was in the country. He 
always had a deep interest in the country 
church. During his pastorate of the First 
Church, Pittsburgh, he was a frequent week- 
day preacher in the country churches round 
about. It might be hard to find a country 
church within sixty or eighty miles of Pitts- 
burgh in which he did not preach and in which 



204 LUTHERAN CHURCH IN THE COUNTRY 

he did not take a deep interest. Many were 
gathered and organized by him. 

After he laid down his work as pastor of the 
First Chnrch to give himself to the larger work 
of his many institutions he spent most of his 
Sundays, even up to his death, founding and 
helping country churches. The story of the 
founding and building of the Baden, Beaver 
County, parish, reads like a romance. It was 
a life-long custom to preach not only in his 
churches, but in all the school houses of each 
district. In this way he reached many along 
the distant highways and hedges. And what a 
seelsorger he was as he went from house to 
house, read the Word and kneeled and prayed 
with all. We cannot tell the story here. Every 
Lutheran pastor ought to study "The Life and 
Letters of Passavant." It will make a better 
man and a better minister of every one who 
reads it. The country pastor will find in it 
much inspiration. 

Land, Land, hear thou the Word of the 
Lord. 

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in 
due season we shall reap, if we faint not. As we 
have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto 
all men, especially unto them who are of the 
household of faith. 



SI)* W\h QUjnrrij Sark $nmt 

Dear are mem'ries of youth, and 'mongst others, 

Dear the cross-roads church near the old farm. 
Where the faith of our fathers and mothers 

Oft found voice in its infinite charm; 
Where from miles 'round the people assembled, 

Feasting faith on the fat of the Word; 
Where the air when they praised fairly trembled; 

Where they hushed for the voice of the Lord. 

There the preacher hurled Law at the sinners 

And gave Gospel to hungry and poor, 
Feeding babes with the milk as beginners 

And strong meat to the strong and mature; 
Oft as pastor to Jesus appealing 

E'er to shepherd the newly cleansed lamb; 
Often leading the sheep for their healing 

To the Body and Blood, their lone balm. 

But the years have wrought change, more's the pity! 

Till the flock, goodly then, is now few; 
For the folk flee the farm for the city, 

And a cross-roads church failure seems due. 
There the pasture was sweet, with sweet waters, 

And the Shepherd's sweet voice called the sheep; 
Yet the old fathers' own sons and daughters, 

Unconcerned, let their consciences sleep. 

Thus myself, who with shame and contrition 

Here confess me unfilial found. 
Yet the old church has still a blest mission, 

To work weal for the folk miles around. 
As for me, let me deem it dear duty 

To help as I'm able and ought, 
That the old church may bloom with new beauty, 

And the faith of our fathers be taught. 

— Alfred Ramsay, D.D. 



INDEX 



Abandoned churches, 61, 63 

64, 65 
Absentee landlordism, 25, 72 

pastors, 83, 84, 100, 131 
Adult confirmation classes, 

124, 169 
Agricultural college, 55, 139 

science, 54 
Amusements in country, 46 
Amusement center, 141 
Antagonism, 26 
Anti-religion, 76 
Architecture, 54 
Ashenhurst, Dr., 61 
Augustana Synod, 110, 111 
Automobile, 47 

Baden, Mr. J. P., 200 
Baptists, 59 
Barn-raising, 44 
Base of supply, 124 
Bethany College, 201 
Bible classes, 124, 169 
Biology, 54 

Bittle, Rev. David F., 198 
Brobst, Rev. S. K., 191 
Building for school, 50 

Carney, Mabel, 54 
Carver, Prof. Thos. N., 25 



Catechization, 170 
Causes of decline, 71 ff., 
79 ff. 

of synods, 99 
Census, 24 
Characteristics of farmer, 

34 ff. 
Chemistry, 11 
Church building, 133 

decline, 71 

giving, 58, 59 

in country, 19 ff. 

school teacher, 55 
Churchless town, 65 
Child life in country, 41, 43 
Chores, 42 

Class antagonism, 26 
Clutz, Dr. J. A., 110 
Coal regions, 122 
Coarting, 65 
Commercialized amuse- 

ments, 117 
Community revival, 161 
Compulsory education, 51 
Congregationalism, 62 
Conveniences for school, 51 
Concordia college, 200 
Conservatism of farmers, 34 
Country bred men, 56 

depletion, 28 

feuds, 37 



207 



208 



INDEX 



Country home, 42 
life, 42, 43, 44 
loafers, 37 
ministers, 79, 139 
parents, 43 
population, 29, 56 
people and Church, 38, 79 
school, 38, 49, 50, 129 
school teacher, 53 
young people, 53 

Danes, 106 f. 

Danish Ev. Luth. Ch., 107 

Synods, 107 
Darwinian Science, 76 
Day in city, 46 
Decline of church, 63, 71 f. 

117, 119 
Degrading conversation, 46 
Deserted churches, 61, 63, 
64 

farms, 17 f. 
Desire for land, 13, 14 
Deindoerfer, Dr., 118 
Dichotomy, 15 
Dissention in church, 64 
Division in churches, 144, 

145 
Doctrine of sin, 86 
Domestic science, 54 
Dutch, 92. 

Eastern" Pennsylvania, 100 
Economic conditions, 23 ff., 

72 
Education, of ministers, 79 

for country, 52 
Educational conditions 

48 ff. 



Effects of sin, 16 

English Lutheranism, 62, 

146, 147 
English Lutheran Churches, 

62 
Environment, 31 
Enthusiasm of ministery, 

124 
Episcopalians, 59 
Equipment of schools, 50 
Examples, 174 ff. 
Extension lectures, 55 
Extent of Luth. Ch., 98 

Fall, The, 15 ff. 
Fallen man, 16 
Fanatics, 160 
Farm, 17 

boy, 45 

buildings, 54 
Farmers' church, 63 
Farmer-giving, 74 
Farm home, 41, 42 
Farmer and nature, 33 
Farmer's wife, 42, 128 
"Federated Churches," 150 
Feuds in country, 37, 80 
Fleidner, Theo., 195 ff. 
Fiske, G. Walter, 29 
Foght, H. W., 54 
Foundation of society, 17 
Fraternal orders, 117 
Freeman, Harlan, N., 64 
Fritschel, Dr., 118 
Furnishings for school, 50 

General economic condi- 
tions, 24 ff. 
Lutheran bodies, 99 



209 



General Synod, 109 
Gerhart, Mr. H. B., 110 
German Rationalism, 138 
Gill, C. O. 150 
Good farmer, 35 
Government, 18 
Grace of God, 32 
Garage, 84 
Greenwald, Dr., 62 
Grossman, Rev., 118 
Grundvig, Bishop, 106 
Gunsaulus, Dr., 57 

Harms, Ludwig, 196 
Heart power, 166 
Hartt, R. L., 61 
Heathenism in country, 60 
Hegelian philosophy, 76 
Heisey, Rev. P. H., 109 
Henkel, Rev. Paul, 197 
Hermansburg, Miss. Society 

196 
Heretical sects, 160 
High school, 51 

school system, 107 
Hindrances, 128 
Home life, 40, 42 
Homme, Rev., 202 
Hopeful situation, 126 
Human nature, 38 
Fuskings, 44 

Hutchins, Rev., H. L., 66 
Hygiene, 55 

Illinois, 29, 65, 116 
Immigration, 92 
Impurity, 52 
Indiana, 29, 64 
Individualist, 73 



Influence of teachers, 77 
Insanity in country, 41 
Inspiring examples, 175 ft 
Inspiration from teachers, 

55 
Influence of invironment, 

31, 32 
iDner Mission, 154, 195 
Inspiration of Scriptures, 

93, 94, 95 
Inter-marriages, 112 
Irreligion, 76 
Iowa, 118 

Synod, 118 
Isolation in country, 40, 41, 

74 

Joint Synod, Ohio, 102 

Keller, Dr., Ezra, 62, 198 
Kern, O. J., 54 
Kindergarten, 184 

Language question, 144, 188, 

146 
Large parishes, 116 
Laziness of farmer, 36 
Landlords, 26 
Land owners, 13, 26 
Leaders from country, 56 
Liberal Theology, 85 
Life in country, 19 ff. 
Literature, 114 
Loehe, Dr., 118, 196 
Loss of population, 28 
Lower taxes, 49 
Love of education, 130 
Love of land, 13, 14, 17 
Lure of city, 14 



210 



Luther League, 173 
Lutheran 59, 91, 126 

characteristics, 127 

divisions, 145 

farmer, 91, 96, 130 

133 

minister, 130 

preaching, 13, 165 

revival, 163 

research, 95 

settlements, 60 

situation, 91 ff., 126 

stock, 126 

theology, 23, 93, 95 

Man, 11 

and soil, 11 ff. 
Mail, 47 
Maine, 61 

Marshall county, 64 
McDowell, Dr., S. J., 109 
Meditative life, 34 
Men for ministry, 124 
Merging churches, 143 
Methodists, 59 
Michigan, 65 
Middle West, 62 
Minister, 79 
Ministers' salaries, 131 
Missouri, 29, 65 

Synod, 93, 118 
Mississippi Valley, 96 
Model family, 42, 43, 44 
Modern improvements, 47 
Moody Bible Institute, 80 
Moral character, 47 
Mother earth, 11, 16 
Mott, John R., 56 
Muss, Rev. B., 199 



Nature in country, 33, 73 

students, 142 
Negative criticism, 93 
Neighborhood life, 44 

sociability, 129 
New England, 29, 61 
New York, 62 
Norelius, Rev. E., 200 
Normal schools, 54, 77 

Oberlin, 178 ff. 

Old world, 168 

Ohio, 62 

Open country church, 63 

Openness of farmer, 38 

Orthodoxism, 114 

Overworked farmer, 41, 73 

Pacific coast states, 96 
Palatines, 92 
Parties, 45 

Pastors for country, 79 
Pastoral charges, 100 
Pastors' salaries, 131 ff. 
Pastoral visiting, 168 
Patience of farmer, 34 
Patten, Prof., 152 
Peery, Prof. R. B., 109 
"Pennsylvania Dutch," 92 
Periodic outings, 46 
Personal pastoral work, 168 
Philosophy, 14 
Pinchot Gifford, 150 
Pittsburgh Synod, 125 
Population of country, 28, 

56 
Pragmatic Psychology, 76 
Preaching in country, 83, 

84, 86, 131, 165 



INDEX 



211 



Presbyterian Church, 59, 60 
Private seelsorge, 167 
Privations of country, 17 
Public school tax, 49 
Psychological conditions, 

31 ff., 73 
Puritans, 59 

Question box, 170 
Questionaire, 99 

Rackbent system, 26 
Rauschenbush, 151 
Real estate, 13 
Recreation for farmer, 46, 

140 
Reformed Churches, 137, 144 
Religious conditions, 58 ff., 
76 

survey, 61, 63, 64 
Remedies, 137 ff., 149, 159 
Retired farmer, 74 
Renters, 25, 72. 
Revelation, 76 
Roman Catholics, 59 
Revivals, 160, 161, 162 
Ronoak college, 198 
Rural mail, 47 

mind, 31 ff., 73 

ministers, 80 

population, 28, 29 

survey, 60, 61, 64 

type, 32 

Salzburgers, 92 
Saving country church, 138 
Scandinavians, 93 
Scandinavian Lutherans, 
110, 111 



School administration, 49, 
50 

district, 48 

directors, 50 

equipment, 50 

conditions, 76 

life, 47 

trustees, 49 
Scientific farming, 96 
Scotch Irish, 31, 163 
Seelsorge, 167 
Secular preaching, 84 
Science of Agriculture, 54 
Shiftlessness, 36 
Sin, 15 

Situation in country, 60 
Social conditions, 40 ff., 74 

events, 45 
Sociology, 76 
Social centers, 55 

service, 150 

pastimes, 44 
Soil, 11 ff. 
Soul, 15 

Spiritual situation, 137 
St. Olaf college, 200 
State schools, 76 
Strassburg, 177 
Strong, Dr. Josiah, 28 
Stuber, Johan, 178 
Sunday visiting, 75 
Sunday-school, 171 
Institute, 172 

leaders, 172 
Sunday observance, 75 
Survey bulletins, 63 
Swensson, Dr. Carl, 201 
Synods, 99 
Tax- collector, 48 



212 



Taxes, 49 

Teachers, 49, 50, 53, 77, 172 

Teaching country school, 54 

Telephone, 47 

Tenant class, 26 

farmer, 24 f., 25, 73 

population, 27 

"rights," 26 

wife, 27 
Text books, 52, 72 
"The Standard," 64 
Thiel, Louis, 199 
Thiel college, 199 
Threshings, 44 
Traditionalism, 34 
Trolley car, 47 
Trustees of school, 49 
Type of piety, 117 

Unattractive churches, 133 

United Danish Lutheran 
Church, 107 

Union churches, 100 
of churches, 96, 143 
Lutheran churches, 147 

Union revivals, 161, 162 



United Norwegian Church, 

115 ff. 
Unity of Lutherans, 98 
Unproductive soil, 72 
Unreasoning conservatism, 

34 
Unscientific farming, 72 

Vacant churches, 65 
Vermont, 62 

Weak churches, 159 
Weber, Dr. H., 110 
Western Pennsylvania, 121 
Wife of farmer, 35, 42 

of tenant, 27 
Wike, Rev. P. C, 202 
Wilson, Dr., 83 
Worldliness, 114 

Yarger, Dr., 109 
Young people 28, 116, 129 
peoples' meetings, 46 ff. 
work, 116 

Zoology, 54 



Mark* of Sr, Cforfor&tttg 

THE WAY OF SALVATION IN THE LUTHERAN 
CHURCH 

The faith of the Church written for the people. Introduc- 
tion by the Rev. M. Rhodes, D.D. 

Cloth, $1.00 post paid 
NEW TESTAMENT CONVERSIONS 
Sermons on conversation, based on New Testament inci- 
dents. This book shows the errors of the modern revival. 
Cloth, $1.00 post paid. 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF WILLIAM A. 
PASSAVANT, D.D. 
Largely an autobiography, we have in this book the life 
story of the Founder of American Inner Mission work who 
introduced the Female Diaconate into America. A wonder- 
ful Life story of a remarkable man. 

8 vo. illustrated, cloth, $2.00 post paid. 

THE LUTHERAN PASTOR 

A book on pastoral theology which is the fruit of a varied 
and rich experience in parish work and in the chair of 
Practical Theology. Readable and instructive for all pas- 
tors. Cloth, 462 pages, $2.00 post paid. 

THE LUTHERAN CATECHIST 

A companion book to The Lutheran Pastor. It deals 
with the theory as well as the practice of Catechetics as 
understood and practiced in the Lutheran Church. 
Cloth, $1.50 post paid. 

PROBLEMS AND PbSSIBILITIES 

A recent book which deals frankly and fearlessly with 
some very vital and timely Problems of present day Lu- 
theranism. Because so very timely, this book has had 
a very large sale. 

180 pages, paper cover, 50 cents post paid. 

DER HEILSWEG IN DER LUTHERAN KIRCHE 

FUR DAS VOLK VERFASZT 

The Way of Salvation translated into German by Pastor 

J. Zentner, with an Introduction by A. Spaeth, D.D. 

75 cents per copy post paid. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Bailey. — The Country Life Movement, MacMillan Co.. $1.25 
Ashenhurst. — The Day of the Country Church, Funk 

& Wagnalls, N.Y 1.00 

Beard. — The Story of Jno. Fred. Oberlin, Pilgrim Press 1.25 

Wilson. — The Church of the Open Country, Missionary 

Education Movement, N. Y 60 

Wilson. — The Church at the Center, Missionary Edu- 
cation Movement 50 

H. L. Freeman. — The Kingdom and the Farm, Fleming 

Revell Co 75 

G. W. Fiske.— The Challenge of the Country, Y.M.CA. .75 



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